upon the ground in that deep despair which on this earth can never again
know hope. She lay there without the power to weep, or the courage to
pray--how long, she knew not. Like the period before creation, her mind
was a chaos of jarring elements, and knew neither the method of
reflection nor the division of time.

As she rose, she heard a slight knock at the door, and her husband
entered. Her heart misgave her; and when she saw him close the door
carefully before he approached her, she felt as if she could have sunk
into the earth, alike from her internal shame, and her fear of its
detection.

Mr. Mandeville was a weak, commonplace character; indifferent in ordinary
matters, but, like most imbecile minds, violent and furious when aroused.
"Is this, Madam, addressed to you?" he cried, in a voice of thunder, as
he placed a letter before her (it was one of Falkland's); "and this, and
this, Madam?" said he, in a still louder tone, as he flung them out one
after another from her own escritoire, which he had broken open.

Emily sank back, and gasped for breath. Mandeville rose, and, laughing
fiercely, seized her by the arm. He grasped it with all his force. She
uttered a faint scream of terror: he did not heed it; he flung her from
him, and as she fell upon the ground, the blood gushed in torrents from
her lips. In the sudden change of feeling which alarm created, he raised
her in his arms. She was a corpse! At that instant the clock struck
upon his ear with a startling and solemn sound: it was the half-hour
after midnight.

The grave is now closed upon that soft and erring heart, with its
guiltiest secret unrevealed. She went to that last home with a blest and