and, till like some faint taper's gleam,
consuming more sustenance than it received, the veriest accident would
extinguish your existence, and then, Flora Bannerworth, you might become
a vampyre."

"Oh! horrible! most horrible!"

"If by chance, or by design, the least glimpse of the cold moonbeams
rested on your apparently lifeless remains, you would rise again and be
one of us--a terror to yourself and a desolation to all around."

"Oh! I will fly from here," said Flora. "The hope of escape from so
terrific and dreadful a doom shall urge me onward; if flight can save
me--flight from Bannerworth Hall, I will pause not until continents and
oceans divide us."

"It is well. I'm able now thus calmly to reason with you. A few short
months more and I shall feel the languor of death creeping over me, and
then will come that mad excitement of the brain, which, were you hidden
behind triple doors of steel, would tempt me again to seek your
chamber--again to seize you in my full embrace--again to draw from your
veins the means of prolonged life--again to convulse your very soul with
terror."

"I need no incentives," said Flora, with a shudder, "in the shape of
descriptions of the past, to urge me on."

"You will fly from Bannerworth Hall?"

"Yes, yes!" said Flora, "it shall be so; its very chambers now are
hideous with the recollection of scenes enacted in them. I will urge my
brothers, my mother, all to leave, and in some distant clime we will
find security and shelter. There even we will learn to think of you with
more of sorrow than of anger--more pity than reproach--more curiosity
than loathing."

"Be it so," said the vampyre; and he clasped his hands, as if with a
thankfulness that he had done so much towards restoring peace at least
to one, who, in consequence of his acts, had felt such exquisite
despair. "Be it so; and even I will hope that the feelings which have
induced so desolated and so isolated a being as myself to endeavour to
bring peace to one human heart, will plead for me, trumpet-tongued, to
Heaven!"

"It will--it will," said Flora.

"Do you think so?"

"I do; and I will pray that the thought may turn to certainty in such a
cause."

The vampyre appeared to be much affected; and then he added,--

"Flora, you know that this spot has been the scene of a catastrophe
fearful to look back upon, in the annals of your family?"

"It has," said Flora. "I know to what you allude; 'tis a matter of
commo