look: your father looked so just before he died!"

"Ill!" said he, with a sort of fearful gayety, "ill--no: I never was
so well; I have been in a dream till now; but I have woke at last.
Why, it is true that I have been silent and shy, but I will be so no
more. I will laugh, and talk, and walk, and make love, and drink
wine, and be all that other men are. Oh, we will be so merry! But
stay here, while I fetch a light."

"A light, my child, for what?"

"For a funeral!" shouted Warner, and, rushing past her, he descended
the stairs, and returned almost in an instant with a light.

Alarmed and terrified, the poor old woman had remained motionless and
weeping violently. Her tears Warner did not seem to notice; he pushed
her gently into the room, and began deliberately, and without uttering
a syllable, to cut the picture into shreds.

"What are you about, my child?" cried the old woman "you are mad; it
is your beautiful picture that you are destroying!"

Warner did not reply, but going to the hearth, piled together, with
nice and scrupulous care, several pieces of paper, and stick, and
matches, into a sort of pyre; then, placing the shreds of the picture
upon it, he applied the light, and the whole was instantly in a blaze.

"Look, look!" cried he, in an hysterical tone, "how it burns and
crackles and blazes! What master ever equalled it now?--no fault now
in those colours,--no false tints in that light and shade! See how