since, the family have passionately clung, and suffered (at the age of
forty) the last penalty. The fourth earl died naturally, but suddenly,
in his bed at the age of fifty during the winter of 1566. At midnight
_of the same day_ he was laid in the grave by his son. This son was
later on, in 1591, seen by _his_ son to fall from a lofty balcony at
Orven Hall, while walking in his sleep at high noonday. Then for some
time nothing happens; but the eighth earl dies mysteriously in 1651 at
the age of forty-five. A fire occurring in his room, he leapt from a
window to escape the flames. Some of his limbs were thereby fractured,
but he was in a fair way to recovery when there was a sudden relapse,
soon ending in death. He was found to have been poisoned by _radix
aconiti indica_, a rare Arabian poison not known in Europe at that time
except to _savants_, and first mentioned by Acosta some months before.
An attendant was accused and tried, but acquitted. The then son of the
House was a Fellow of the newly-founded Royal Society, and author of a
now-forgotten work on Toxicology, which, however, I have read. No
suspicion, of course, fell on _him_.'

As Zaleski proceeded with this retrospect, I could not but ask myself
with stirrings of the most genuine wonder, whether he could possess
this intimate knowledge of _all_ the great families of Europe! It was
as if he had spent a part of his life in making special study of the
history of the Orvens.

'In the same manner,' he went on, 'I could detail the annals of the
family from that time to the present. But all through they have been
marked by the same latent tragic elements; and I have said enough to
show you that in each of the tragedies there was invariably something
large, leering, something of which the mind demands explanation, but
seeks in vain to find it. Now we need no longer seek. Destiny did not