emain at the pier-table, moody and hectic. Mr.
Snivel drops into a sound sleep, his head resting on the marble.
Weak-minded, jealous, contentious--with all the attendants natural to
one who leads an unsettled life, sits George Mullholland, his elbow
resting on the table, and his head poised thoughtfully in his hand. "I
will have revenge--sweet revenge; yes, I will have revenge to-night!" he
mutters, and sets his teeth firmly.

In Anna's chamber all is hushed into stillness. The silvery moonbeams
play softly through the half-closed windows, lighting up and giving an
air of enchantment to the scene. Curtains hang, mist-like, from massive
cornices in gilt. Satin drapery, mysteriously underlaid with lace, and
floating in bewitching chasteness over a fairy-like bed, makes more
voluptuous that ravishing form calmly sleeping--half revealed among the
snowy sheets, and forming a picture before which fancy soars, passion
unbends itself, and sentiment is led away captive. With such exquisite
forms strange nature excites our love;--that love that like a little
stream meanders capriciously through our feelings, refreshing life,
purifying our thoughts, exciting our ambition, and modulating our
actions. That love, too, like a quicksand, too often proves a destroyer
to the weak-minded.

Costly chairs, of various styles carved in black walnut, stand around
the chamber: lounges covered with chastely-designed tapestry are seen
half concealed by the gorgeous window curtains. The foot falls upon a
soft, Turkey carpet; the ceiling--in French white, and gilt
mouldings--is set off with two Cupids in a circle, frescoed by a skilled
hand. On a lounge, concealed in an alcove masked by curtains pending
from the hands of a fairy in bronze, and nearly opposite Anna's bed, the
old Judge sleeps in his judicial dignity. To-day he sentenced three
rogues to the whipping-post, and two wretched negroes--one for raising
his hand to a white man--to the gallows.

Calmly Anna continues to sleep, the lights in the girandoles shedding a
mysterious paleness over the scene. To the eye that scans only the
exterior of life, how dazzling! Like a refulgent cloud swelling golden
in the evening sky, how soon it passes away into darkness and
disappointment! Suddenly there appears, like a vision in the chamber,
the stately figure of a female. Advancing slowly to the bed-side, for a
minute she stands contemplating the sleeping beauty before her. A dark,
languishing eye,