Leon lay there a long time, unconscious of the flight of time. His scattered faculties slowly recovered their power of calmly contemplating the situation, though he found no peace. He rose to leave the house, and wandered vaguely from one room to another, seeking his way to the hall. When at length he reached it, he thought he heard strange voices, and stood still to listen; then, turning away, he descended a flight of back stairs that led to the basement floor, and tried to find his way out into the garden. After going in and out for some time in the endless and tortuous corridors of the servant’s premises, he saw a door which he opened.

All the blood in his body rushed in a cold tide to his heart and gave him a shock like a sudden fall, as he found himself in the chapel, lighted up by innumerable flambeaux. He took off his hat and gazed with open eyes. He was too much startled to do anything for some time but stand motionless at the door; he hardly seemed to breathe, and his bewildered mind was aware only of a mountain of light, for so it appeared to him: a mass of ruddy slender flames which stretched their quivering tongues to the very roof, rising from the melting wax that dropped in yellow streams. In the midst, as a base to this blazing pyramid, a funereal object filled, as it were the throne of honour; white drapery and two marble hands were all that could be distinguished.

It needed all his manly courage to carry him nearer. Before stepping forward he glanced round him. No one was there; he could not hear a sound, not even a living breath, was audible; the cold remains of a human being, robed in the garments of a saintly death, seemed guarded by silence. The statue of a pallid youth stood upon the altar; his eyes, painted like life, shone across the chapel, to watch all who entered, and say: “Beware! Touch her not!”

Leon advanced slowly, treading softly that he might not hear the sound of his own steps. Reverence, the sanctity of the spot, his agonising hesitancy between the wish to approach and the instinct to withdraw, caused him to go through half a dozen separate states of mind in the course of the twenty steps between the door and the altar: anxiety and curiosity, nay fear—or superstition. He had time to assure himself that it was awe that held him back, and the audacious curiosity of that very awe which urged him forward.

He saw her. There she lay, before him, on the ground, and at the very threshold, as it were, of the realm where her immortal soul might find complete repose. Her spirit, selfish rather than generous, had already passed, with a sigh perhaps of surprise and awe, into the unknown land where love is the only wisdom, and where good and evil are more exactly appreciated and understood.

After once looking at her, and the first shock of reverence and pain over, he remained gazing thus; hearing the throbbing in his own temples and the rush of the blood in his veins, like the roar of an internal tide.

She was covered with a white robe, laid over her limbs by pious friends, with severe purity. Ample folds lay in straight lines from her neck to her feet, broken only by the marble hands which held a crucifix. A semi-transparent veil was over her face, neither concealing it nor too plainly revealing the outline, but letting it be seen vaguely, remotely as it were, through a mist of clouds, like the image that survives from a dream in eyes but half-awake. He would have liked to see more clearly what remained of her unequalled beauty, which, under the hand of death, was fading like some withered violet-tinted flower. In that face, blind and dead as it was, there was still some trace of expression. Leon found himself gazing into the depths of that vacant mystery, made deeper by the clouds of gauze, and recognised the look he had last seen on her features—a look less of love than of irony.

His brain was busy with all the solemn thoughts that besiege a man in the great crises of life: he reflected on the wide distance that divides us from true happiness—a distance that mind cannot measure, and that man has no means of shortening. Suddenly his meditations were interrupted by a commonplace and intrusive sound—a cough. He looked round. He and the dead were not alone. In a corner of the chapel sat a watcher. It was the little priest, seated on a bench with his eyes fixed on his prayer-book. Leon could not help admiring the fidelity of the spiritual friend who, having been her guide during life, had constituted himself her guardian in death. Without lifting his head, the Italian raised his eyes and looked for a few seconds at Leon fixedly—very fixedly. Then he looked down again and went on reading. This simple, calm drooping of the eyes was expressive of the most sovereign contempt imaginable. Paoletti murmured on, as though not a soul were present: “Ego sum vermis et non homo, opprobium hominum et abjectio plebis.”

Why was it that, as he left the chapel—no less reverently than he had entered it—Leon felt in his soul a soothing sense of consolation?—He had seen, face to face the worst terrors of the moral and physical world, and the struggle to which the contemplation had given rise had left his soul surrounded by melancholy ruins. Impavidum ferient ruinae, as a heathen said! But though he was crushed, alone, exiled and injustly judged, what could he care while his conscience was free in the sunshine that brightens it when it is sure of having acted rightly.

On returning to his empty house he found his servant busy packing in obedience to his orders given a few hours since. The man expressed great joy at seeing him, and when Leon enquired as to the cause of his eager satisfaction, the faithful fellow replied:

“At the SeÑora Marquesa’s, and in all the houses where you are known, they said you would be brought home with a bullet through your brains to-night. They were so sure of it that I could not help crying.”

Leon smiled sadly.

“And so, when I came in to pack, the first thing I did was to hide your pistols, in case you should kill yourself here if you had not done it before.”

“Where have you put them? Are they loaded?” said Leon hastily.

“Oh! Master, do not kill yourself!” cried the terrified man.

“Nay, be easy, my friend,” said Leon pointing to his forehead. “This brain is not bent on suicide.—As to the pistols, if they are loaded you had better drop them into the street, for the first fool to experiment upon.”

“Throw them away! They are beauties!”

“Well, keep them yourself then; keep them till you marry.”

“You forget, Sir; I am married.”

“Well then, till you are a widower.”

“From MarquÉs de FÚcar to MarquÉs de OnÉsimo.

“Madrid, December 1st.

“Before leaving London via Hamburg to purchase the twenty bales of tobacco, sell all the Rio Tinto shares, and the foreign consols. Buy at once Paris Gas, and Spanish crÉdit mobilier. The loan—the third State loan this year—is getting on capitally. I want an investment here to enable me to propose to the Government to pay off part of the foreign coupons to English holders, which will promote the affair here very effectually; the profits I anticipate from this are incalculable. For everything else act on my instructions of November 23rd. Do not forget my orders for taking every advantage of the Hamburg tobacco merchants; no backwardness; business is good, so you need not run up to extravagant prices.

“My daughter keeps well. Very sad, very lonely, in fairly good health, resigned and calm. She never leaves Suertebella. Mona, sweeter every day, sends you three kisses. The wretch holds to his bargain and never molests us. He has turned stock-broker, and they tell me he watches the market with great patience and judgment, and is making a huge fortune. He is clever enough, there is no doubt of that.

“I expect you to eat your Christmas dinner at Suertebella.

“Yours as ever,

“P. FÚcar.

“P. S. If you should come across that queer fellow give him my kind regards—but only mine.”

The End.