by contrast the restless brightness of her full, dark eyes, and the whiteness of her low brow. She was fully thirty-five years old, but nature and art had combined so gracefully in her make-up that she did not appear twenty-five.
A sudden peal of the door-bell made her spring up suddenly in nervous terror of she scarce knew what. She had hardly reseated herself when an obsequious servant ushered in a tall, exceedingly distinguished-looking young man. It was Lancelot Darling, the betrothed lover of the dead girl.
He was a splendidly handsome and imposing gentleman, but his elegant dress was disordered, his face was pale, almost to the verge of ghastliness, his large, brilliant dark eyes were so wild in their expression of grief that they almost seemed to glare upon the lady who advanced toward him with extended hands.
"Mr. Darling," she murmured in a low tone of surprise and pleasure. "You are better, you are able to be out."
He pressed her hand speechlessly, and tottered to a sofa, falling heavily upon it while his eyes closed for a minute. In a fright at the look of exhaustion on his white face, Mrs. Vance darted from the room, soon returning with a glass of cordial.
She lifted his head on her arm and pressed the goblet to his lips, trembling excessively the while. In a moment he revived, and rising on his elbow looked up while a faint flush mounted to his white forehead.
"Pardon me," he said, in a broken voice. "This is unmanly, I know, but I have been very ill, Mrs. Vance, and I am weak still—and it is hard, oh! so hard to come here like this!" He sat up, pushing the dark locks back from his brow, while a shudder ran through his strong frame.
"Believe me, I sympathize with you, I grieve with you," murmured the lady in silvery tones. "Our poor, lost Lily!" and her face was hidden in her handkerchief while a sob seemed to shake her graceful form.
"They say she died by her own hand," he cried, excitedly. "My God! what mystery is here, Mrs. Vance? What hidden cause drove the girl who was almost my wife to that fearful deed?"
"Did you suspect no cause?" asked she, looking at him sadly.
"None—there could be none. Young, beautiful, loving and beloved, she had no cause for sorrow."
"So it seemed to you," she answered, in low, soft tones, looking down as if she could not bear the anguish written on his features; "but strange as it may seem, Lily had some trouble unknown to us all, but which I suspected months ago. She had strange moods of deep depression and abstraction, followed by a feverish, unnatural gaiety. My suspicion of some mysterious trouble weighing on her heart was only confirmed by her sad and tragic death."
"Of what nature did you suspect her mysterious trouble to be?" asked the young man, looking at her in surprise and anxiety.
"I had nothing but conjecture to build on," said she, reluctantly. "It would be cruelty to harrow your soul with suspicions that may be baseless."
"But I insist on your telling me," said he, with unconscious imperiousness of tone and look.
"I fancied—mind, I only fancied," said she, deprecatingly, "that Lily, though betrothed to you, had conceived an unrequited attachment for another, or that perhaps she was the victim of some boarding-school entanglement which threatened to mar her happiness."
"Oh, impossible!" he answered, decisively. "Lily had no silly school-girl entanglements. She told me so. And she loved me alone—loved me as devotedly as I loved her—I am perfectly certain of that. No, Mrs. Vance, you are mistaken. The theory of the jury is the only one I can accept. The fatal deed must have been committed under a temporary aberration of mind."
The sudden entrance of Mr. Lawrence checked the mournful expression that rose to her lips.
As the two men shook hands in silence, each noted the ravages grief had made in the other.
Mr. Lawrence's portly form was bowed feebly, his genial face was seamed with lines of grief and care, while premature silver threads shone amid his chestnut-brown hair.
The ghastly pallor of Lancelot Darling, his wild eyes, his trembling hands, attested how maddening and soul-harrowing was his despair.
"Lance, my poor boy, you have been ill," said the banker, in a gentle tone of sympathy.
"Yes, I have been ill," said Lancelot, brokenly; then almost crushing the banker's hand in his strong, unconscious grasp, he broke out wildly: "Mr. Lawrence, I have come here to beg a favor of you."
"Name it," said Mr. Lawrence, kindly.
"I want the key of your vault. I want to see my Lily's face once more," he answered, in an imploring tone.
"Would it be well? Would it be wise?" asked the other in a tone of surprise and pain.
"I do not know, I do not ask," said Lancelot, impetuously. "I only know that my soul hungers for a sight of my darling's face. Do not refuse me, my friend. Let me see her once more before death has obliterated all her beauty!"
"Better think of her, Lance, as when you last saw her in life and health," said the banker uneasily. "She is already changed. You are too weak to bear the agitation that would ensue if I granted your request."
"You refuse me, then," said the young man in a voice of passionate grief. "She was to have been my wife ere now, yet you will not suffer me to press one last, long kiss on the cold lips of my darling."
"Oh, do not refuse him," cried Mrs. Vance, gliding forward and laying a persuasive little hand on the banker's arm. "Think of his bleeding heart and blighted hopes. Remember how fondly he loved her. Go with him to the vault, and show him our broken Lily lying asleep in the deep rest she coveted."
Lancelot's heavy, dark eyes flashed a look of gratitude upon the beautiful pleader as she ceased to speak.
The banker paused irresolutely.
"If I thought he could bear it," he murmured.
"I can bear it, I will!" said Lancelot, firmly. "Only grant my request."
"The sexton has the key of the vault," said Mr. Lawrence, yielding reluctantly. "I will go with you, Lance."
"Let it be at once then. My carriage is at the gate," said the half frenzied young lover, moving off after a slight bow to Mrs. Vance.
Mr. Lawrence followed him, the door was closed, and the handsome widow stood alone in the center of the splendid drawing-room. She took one or two turns up and down the room, her black dress trailing its gloomy folds over the rich carpet.
"Let him go," she said at last, pausing and clenching her delicate hands together. "Let him go! That marble mask of his beautiful love can but disenchant him. I have already dropped a suspicion of her love into his heart. He does not heed it yet, but no matter, it shall take root, it shall grow, it shall bear fruit an hundredfold! He shall turn to me yet. I love him with a love passing everything, and I will stop at nothing till I call him mine!"
She laughed aloud as the thought of her future triumph swept through her heart. It was a strange, eerie laugh—It sounded as if a beautiful fiend had laughed in Hades.
The elegant carriage, with its high stepping, spirited gray horses, bowled rapidly along the busy streets of New York, and at length paused before the beautiful cemetery in which Mr. Lawrence's vault was situated. The banker then stepped into the sexton's house where he called for the key of the vault. The sexton gave it to him with some surprise at the request, and the gentleman returned to Lancelot Darling who was impatiently pacing a graveled path in the "fair Necropolis of the dead."
The banker paused and laid his hand on the young man's arm.
"I have the key, Lance," he said, "but even now I wish I could persuade you not to enter the vault; I dread the effect on your already weak nerves. Remember what a difference there must be between the blooming Lily you last looked upon and the poor, faded flower in yon gloomy stone vault."
"Mr. Lawrence, you do but torture me," said the young man, with a gesture of wild despair. "However she may be changed let me see her. Yet I cannot believe that that beautiful face can be altered so soon. Cruel death would stay his defacing hand when he looked on such loveliness."
With a sigh of regret