herself a courage that disdained to yield. The succeeding appearance of
calm was more fatal to her. There was nothing now, powerfully to foster
her courage or excite her energy. She looked back at the trials she had
passed, and her soul sickened at the recollection of that, which, while
it was in act, she had had the fortitude to endure. Till the period at
which Mr. Tyrrel had been inspired with this cruel antipathy, she had
been in all instances a stranger to anxiety and fear. Uninured to
misfortune, she had suddenly and without preparation been made the
subject of the most infernal malignity. When a man of robust and
vigorous constitution has a fit of sickness, it produces a more powerful
effect, than the same indisposition upon a delicate valetudinarian. Such
was the case with Miss Melville. She passed the succeeding night
sleepless and uneasy, and was found in the morning with a high fever.
Her distemper resisted for the present all attempts to assuage it,
though there was reason to hope that the goodness of her constitution,
assisted by tranquillity and the kindness of those about her, would
ultimately surmount it. On the second day she was delirious. On the
night of that day she was arrested at the suit of Mr. Tyrrel, for a debt
contracted for board and necessaries for the last fourteen years.

The idea of this arrest, as the reader will perhaps recollect, first
occurred, in the conversation between Mr. Tyrrel and Miss Melville, soon
after he had thought proper to confine her to her chamber. But at that
time he had probably no serious conception of ever being induced to
carry it into execution. It had merely been mentioned by way of threat,
and as the suggestion of a mind, whose habits had long been accustomed
to contemplate every possible instrument of tyranny and revenge. But
now, that the unlooked-for rescue and escape of his poor kinswoman had
wrought up his thoughts to a degree of insanity, and that he revolved in
the gloomy recesses of his mind, how he might best shake off the load of