record, to fulfil my desire--my curse! Lay your hand on mine: swear that
through life to death,--swear! You speak not! repeat my words after
me:"--Constance obeyed:--"through life to death; through good, through
ill, through weakness, through power, you will devote yourself to humble,
to abase that party from whom your father received ingratitude,
mortification, and death! Swear that you will not marry a poor and
powerless man, who cannot minister to the ends of that solemn retribution
I invoke! Swear that you will seek to marry from amongst the great; not
through love, not through ambition, but through hate, and for revenge!
You will seek to rise that you may humble those who have betrayed me! In
the social walks of life you will delight to gall their vanities in state
intrigues, you will embrace every measure that can bring them to their
eternal downfall. For this great end you will pursue all means. What!
you hesitate? Repeat, repeat, repeat!--You will lie, cringe, fawn, and
think vice not vice, if it bring you one jot nearer to Revenge! With this
curse on my foes, I entwine my blessing, dear, dear Constance, on
you,--you, who have nursed, watched, all but saved me! God, God bless
you, my child!" And Vernon burst into tears.

It was two hours after this singular scene, and exactly in the third hour
of morning, that Vernon woke from a short and troubled sleep. The grey
dawn (for the time was the height of summer) already began to labour
through the shades and against the stars of night. A raw and comfortless
chill crept over the earth, and saddened the air in the death-chamber.
Constance sat by her father's bed, her eyes fixed upon him, and her cheek
more wan than ever by the pale light of that crude and cheerless dawn.
When Vernon woke, his eyes, glazed with death, rolled faintly towards her,
fixing and dimming in their sockets as they gazed;--his throat rattled.
But for one moment his voice found vent; a ray shot across his countenance
as he uttered his last words--words that sank at once and eternally to the