supreme moment of mortal life; whom he has
sustained and cheered and strengthened in a dread conflict with Death
himself; singular enough is the sensation that arises under such
circumstances as these, my boy--singular, and overwhelming, and
intolerable; a sensation which paralyzes the tongue and makes one
mute, yet still brings on a resistless and invincible desire to speak
and make all known; and should such a scene be too long continued, the
probability is that the desire and the longing thus to speak will
eventually burst through all restraint, and pour forth in a volume of
fierce, passionate eloquence, that will rush onward, careless of
consequences. Now, such was my situation, and such was my sensation,
and such, no doubt, would have been the end of it all, had not the
scene been brought to an end by the arrival of O'Halloran and his wife,
preceded by a servant with lights, who soon put the room in a state of
illumination.

Nora, as I must still call her, was somewhat embarrassed at first
meeting me--for she could not forget our last interview; but she
gradually got over it, and, as the evening wore on, she became her old,
lively, laughing, original self. O'Halloran, too, was in his best and
moat genial mood, and, as I caught at times the solemn glance of the
dark eye's of Marion, I found not a cloud upon the sky that overhung
our festivities. Marion, too, had more to say than usual. She was no
longer so self-absorbed, and so abstracted, as she once was. She was
not playful and lively like Nora; but she was, at least, not sad; she
showed an interest in all that was going on, and no longer dwelt apart
like a star.

It was evident that Nora knew nothing at all about the duel. That was a
secret between O'Halloran and me. It was also evident that she knew
nothing about Marion's adventure--that was a secret between Marion and
me. There was another secret, also, which puzzled me, and of which
O'Halloran must, of course, have known as little as I did, and this was
that strange act of Nora's in pretending to be the Lady of the Ice.
Why had she done it? For what possible reason? Why had Marion allowed
her to do it? All this was a mystery. I also wondered much whether she
thought that I still believed in that pretence of hers. I thought she
did, and attributed to this that embarrassment which she showed when
she first greeted me. On this, as on the former occasion, her
embarrassment had, no doubt, arisen from the fact th