of his dead mother with
uplifted finger and sad reproachful eyes fixed upon her son. The
countenance so sorrowfully beautiful, the long bright gleaming of the
white robe, the tresses floating down over the shoulders like a golden
veil, for one instant he saw them, not dim and shadowy like the fading
outlines of a dream, but with all the marked full character of living
vision.

"Oh mother, mother!" he whispered, as he stretched out his hands, and
sank trembling upon his knees, and bowed his head; but as he raised his
head again, there was nothing there; only the glimmer of lamps about the
court, and the pale moonlight streaming through the curtains, partly
drawn, into the quaint old room.

Unable to trust himself with the murderous weapon in his hand even for a
moment, yet swept from his evil purpose by the violent reflux of new and
better thoughts, he fired the pistol into the air. The barrel,
enormously overloaded, burst in the discharge, and uttering a cry, he
fell fainting, with his right hand shattered, to the ground.

His cry and the loud report of the explosion raised the alarm, and as
the men rushed up and forced open the door of his room, they found him
weltering in his blood upon the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

EVA ENTERS THE CHAPEL.

"I took it for a faery vision
Of some bright creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live
And play i' the plighted clouds; I was awe-struck,
And, as I passed, I worshipped."
Comus.

The long, long illness that followed, and the weary time which it took
to heal the mutilated hand, proved the greatest blessings that could
have befallen the weak and erring heart of Edward Kennedy. They spared
him the necessity of that heart-rending meeting with those whom he best
loved, the dread of which had been the most powerful incitement to urge
upon him the thought of suicide. They gave him time to look before and
after--they relieved the painful tension of his overwrought mind--they
calmed him with the necessity for quiet thought and deep rest after the
anguish and turmoil of the bygone months.

When he awoke to consciousness, Eva was sitting by his bedside in the
sick-room. Slowly the well-remembered objects and the beloved face
broke upon his recollection, but at first he could remember nothing
more, nor connect the strange present with the excited past. Still more
slowly--as when one breaks the azure sleep of some unruffled mountain