a candle streamed on his eyes. He rubbed them: could he see right? Sir
Miles was seated at the table; he must have got up and lighted a candle
to write,--noiselessly, indeed. The servant looked and looked, and the
stillness of Sir Miles awed him: he was seated on an armchair, leaning
back. As awe succeeded to suspicion, he sprang up, approached his
master, took his hand: it was cold, and fell heavily from his clasp. Sir
Miles must have been dead for hours.

The pen lay on the ground, where it had dropped from the hand; the letter
on the table was scarcely commenced: the words ran thus,--

"LUCRETIA,--You will return no more to my house. You are free as if I
were dead; but I shall be just. Would that I had been so to your mother,
to your sister! But I am old now, as you say, and--"

To one who could have seen into that poor proud heart at the moment the
hand paused forever, what remained unwritten would have been clear.
There was, first, the sharp struggle to conquer loathing repugnance, and
address at all the false and degraded one; then came the sharp sting of
ingratitude; then the idea of the life grudged and the grave desired;
then the stout victory over scorn, the resolution to be just; then the
reproach of the conscience that for so far less an offence the sister had
been thrown aside, the comfort, perhaps, found in her gentle and
neglected child obstinately repelled; then the conviction of all earthly
vanity and nothingness,--the look on into life, with the chilling
sentiment that affection was gone, that he could never trust again, that
he was too old to open his arms to new ties; and then, before felt
singly, all these thoughts united, and snapped the cord.

In announcing his mournful intelligence, with more feeling than might