breathing caught
through the stillness of the chamber, when the wind had died in the
distance, gave assurance to the nurse that all danger was past; and,
wearied with the watching of the last four nights, she retired to a closet
opening from Lady Alice's apartment, and was soon buried in the heavy
slumber of exhaustion.

That profound sleep was rudely broken through by wild, loud cries,
reaching over the rage of the elements, which had now risen to a storm.
The terrified woman staggered to the bedroom, to witness there a fearful
change--sudden, not to be accounted for. A night-lamp shed its dim light
through the apartment on a scene of horror and mystery. All was silence
now--and the Lady Alice stood erect on the floor, half shrouded in the
heavy curtains of the bed, and clasping her infant in her arms. By this
time the attendants, roused from sleep, had reached the apartment, and
assisted in taking the child from its mother's stiff embrace; it had
uttered no cry, and when they brought it to the light, the blaze fell on
features swollen and lifeless--it was dead in its helplessness--dead by
violence, for on its throat were the marks of strong and sudden pressure;
but how, by whom, was a horrid mystery. They laid the mother on the bed,
and as they did so, a letter fell from her grasp--a wild fit of delirium
succeeded, followed by a heavy swoon, from which the physician failed in
awaking her--before the night had passed, Lady Alice Daventry had been
summoned to her rest. The sole clew to the events of that night was the
letter which had fallen from Lady Alice; it the physician had picked up
and read, but positively refused to reveal its contents, more than to hint
that they betrayed guilt that rendered his wife and child's removal more a
blessing than a misfortune to Sir John Daventry. Yet somehow rumors were
heard that the letter was in Charles Mardyn's hand; that it had fallen in
Sir John's way, and revealed to him a guilty attachment between Mardyn and
his wife; but how it came into her hands, or how productive of such a
catastrophe as the destruction of her infant, her frenzy, and death,
remained unknown: but one further gleam of light was ever thrown on that
dark tragedy. The nurse-tender, who had first come to her mistress's
assistance, declared that, as she entered the room, she had heard steps in
quick retreat along the gallery leading from Lady Alice's room, and a few
surmised that, in the dead of night, her husb