man, I come not now to warn you of danger-I come the herald of glad tidings; joy awaits you; on the wings of the wind I come to tell you so.Leave Dover to-morrow for Oakenwold without fail!-And now my errand is sped!" She flew up an almost perpendicular part of the rock, by a crack in its front, and left Amherst astonished with her warning, and not the less so, that it agreed so well with what Lochandhu had hinted to him. He hastened home, and having told his friend Cleaver of the strange adventures of the night. they agreed to set out for Oakenwold Manor next day. CHAPTER XII. Enfin parcourez toutes les passions, c'est sur les cœurs des Grands, qui vivent dans l'oubli de Dieu, qu'elles exercent un empire plus triste et plus tyrannique. MASSILLON. LADY DEBORAH DELASSAUX had no sooner retired to her apartment, than she lighted a taper, and opening the letter she had so mysteriously received, sat down eagerly to peruse the following appalling words: "The day of retribution has arrived; artifice can no longer avail !-Thou art called upon for restitution !-Resistance can but provoke deeper inquiry, that may unfold thy darkest secrets, and hurl thee to perdition !-Bow, then, to the will of thine offended God!-Be thankful that he yet permits thee to make tardy reparation for even a fragment of thy crimes !-To redeem all were as impossible, as for the earth and sea to yield up their dead at thy puny command!-But mercy on high may yet be purchased by penitence !-Resolve, then!-for the vengeance of Heaven is unrolled, and already quivers over thy devoted head !!!" The Lady Deborah's eyes glared as they decyphered the characters of this strange communication. They seemed to her to blaze as she read them. Her countenance, was distorted by the most horrible expression, and she sank back into her chair. Mercy!" said she, in a deep soliloquy, mingled with incessant groans, " mercy! where can there be mercy for me? Oh that indeed it were possible for the sea to give up its dead! Oh that I could pluck back my years from the gulf of time into which they have irrecoverably floated; or that an ocean of oblivion would roll over them to drown the memory of their events for ever! From myself, alas! I cannot hide them. I must still carry the burning remembrance of them in this tortured breast, until I am consumed by the fire it nourishes within its recesses. But I at least thought that my name would remain unsullied-that my reputation would be safe from the taunts and insults of the vulgar world. My worst crime was known but to two in this country.No, no,” continued she, after a pause, "it cannot be. One of these has fallen by the hand of the other, without any fresh guilt to me, and the arch-fiend Antonio, is by this time himself unconscious. How long have my life and reputation hung trembling beneath his threats, ready to be blasted at every moment by the breath of his malignity. But I trust that, ere this, his venomous tongue is put to sleep, by a poison yet more potent than its own; and then,-pooh! he died by his own hand. -A felon flying from the messengers of justice, by whom he was pursued for a double murder, and the pitiful robbery of a horse!'Twas most excellent!-Yet who can have known as much as this paper hints at ? Antonio, however vacillating, cannot but have been faithful as yet. But his assistant, I have but too much reason to think that he may have proved treacherous. But, then, granting that he has been so, he now no longer exists to support his own tale; and coming, as it must do, at second hand from him to whom it has been bequeathed, it can have but little force against the high testimony of such a ! |