r smile again; that the roseate hue of health will again revisit
her cheeks, the light buoyancy of her step return, and that as before
she may be the joy of all around her, dispensing and receiving
happiness.

And, he too, that gallant fearless lover, he whom no chance of time or
tide could sever from the object of his fond affections, he who listened
to nothing but the dictates of his heart's best feelings, let us indulge
a hope that he will have a bright reward, and that the sunshine of a
permanent felicity will only seem the brighter for the shadows that for
a time have obscured its glory.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE STRANGE INTERVIEW.--THE CHASE THROUGH THE HALL.

[Illustration]

It was with the most melancholy aspect that anything human could well
bear, that Sir Francis Varney took his lonely walk, although perhaps in
saying so much, probably we are instituting a comparison which
circumstances scarcely empower us to do; for who shall say that that
singular man, around whom a very atmosphere of mystery seemed to be
perpetually increasing, was human?

Averse as we are to believe in the supernatural, or even to invest
humanity with any preternatural powers, the more than singular facts and
circumstances surrounding the existence and the acts of that man bring
to the mind a kind of shuddering conviction, that if he be indeed really
mortal he still must possess some powers beyond ordinary mortality, and
be walking the earth for some unhallowed purposes, such as ordinary men
with the ordinary attributes of human nature can scarcely guess at.

Silently and alone he took his way through that beautiful tract of
country, comprehending such picturesque charms of hill and dale which
lay between his home and Bannerworth Hall. He was evidently intent upon
reaching the latter place by the shortest possible route, and in the
darkness of that night, for the moon had not yet risen, he showed no
slight acquaintance with the intricacies of that locality, that he was
at all enabled to pursue so undeviatingly a tract as that which he took.

He muttered frequently to himself low, indistinct words as he went, and
chiefly did they seem to have reference to that strange interview he had
so recently had with one who, from some combination of circumstances
scarcely to be guessed at, evidently exercised a powerful control over
him, and was enabled to make a demand upon his pecuniary resources of
rather startling magnitude.

And ye