to apprehend clearly what had occurred within the last few hours and what
lay before her: She must leave this room, this ample couch, this house--
all, in short, that was bound up with the dearest memories of those she
had loved. She was to be forced to this--but did it beseem her to submit
to this Negro, this stranger in the house where she was mistress? She
shook her head with a scornful smile; then opening a glass phial, which
was still half-full of opium pillules, she placed a few on her tongue and
again gazed sky-wards.--Another face now looked down on her; she saw the
husband from whom not even death could divide her, and at his feet their
two murdered sons. Presently Orion seemed to rise out of the clouds, as
a diver comes up from the water, and make for the shore of the island on
which George and the other two seemed to be standing. His father opened
his arms to receive him and clasped him to his heart, while she herself
--or was it only her wraith--went to the others, who hurried forward to
greet her tenderly; and then her husband, too, met her, and she found
rest on his bosom.

For hours, and long before the incursion of the Arabs, she had been
feeling half stunned and her mind clouded; but now a delicious,
slumberous lethargy came over her, to which her whole being urged her to
yield. But every time her eyes closed, the thought of the morrow shot
through her brain, and finally, with a great effort, she sat up, took
some water--which was always close at hand--shook into it the remaining
pillules in the bottle, and drank it off to the very last drop.

Her hand was steady; the happy smile on her lips, and the eager
expression of her eyes, might have led a spectator to believe that she
was thirsty and had mixed herself a refreshing draught. She had no look
of a desperate creature laying violent hands on her own life; she felt no
hesitancy, no fear of death, no burthen of the guilt she was incurring--