A biscuit and a glass of wine-and-water was usually the temperate supper of the brothers. They generally took it in the library, and read till they felt disposed to retire for the night. This evening Alfred, who had risen from the table for a book which he happened to be some little time in selecting, observed on his return, but without a suspicion at the moment as to the cause, that the water which Willoughby was pouring into his glass looked less clear than usual. He remarked upon the circumstance and advised his brother to put it away and have some fresh brought up.

"It seems very good," said Willoughby, adding wine and taking off the whole at one draught, though in general he sipped it from time to time during perhaps an hour of either reading or conversation.

Alfred accustomed to his brother's love of opposition in trifles was not at all surprised. He sighed, however, for he always considered this infirmity of temper a symptom of the incipient malady he dreaded; so simply saying,

"There is quite a sediment in the goblet you see," he read on, but still without an apprehension. It had somehow never once entered into his calculations, amid all his vague fears, that a mode and occasion so public as the present would have been chosen.

"Put away your book, Alfred," said Willoughby, a few moments after. Alfred looked up and saw that his brother was pale in the extreme, and with a ghastliness of expression quite alarming.

"I have the idea more strongly impressed upon my mind than ever this evening that I shall not live long!" said Willoughby in a voice changed and hoarse; "and that when I do die," he continued, "it will be suddenly, very suddenly: let our good-night then be also a farewell; we know not what may happen before morning."

"Do not make me miserable by such melancholy forebodings," said Alfred, "surely—there is, there can be no cause for such! Willoughby! Willoughby! you do look ill!" And the thought crossed his mind, that had he not secured the poison he should now be really alarmed.

"It is only a presentiment," said Willoughby, affecting a ghastly smile; "yet, lest it should be verified, indulge me in my childishness, and before I go to bed take leave of me, and—forgive, say you forgive every pettish word, every wilful act, of which I have ever been guilty towards you, my kind, my excellent, my too amiable brother."

"Forgive! dear Willoughby! surely I have all that is kind and noble in intention to thank you for, nothing to forgive—unless indeed," and he paused in silent alarm. "Oh, Willoughby," he added, gazing at the working of his countenance, "I fear—I fear some terrible purpose! speak to me! tell me I am wrong—you have no such thought—no you would not—you press my hand, what does that mean? Speak, Willoughby! Is it to reassure me?—oh, my poor mother—think of her!—think of me, how much, how truly I love you, never should I know happiness again, if—oh misery—those eyes—he does not know me!" Willoughby attempted to speak; the words were not only indistinctly uttered, but evidently without purpose in their arrangement; while unable longer to maintain the struggle against bodily suffering, with the wildness of delirium in his looks and gestures, he sank on a sofa writhing in agonies which partook of the nature of convulsions.

The now terrified Alfred, calling aloud for help, hastily loosed his brother's stock and undid the buttons of his waistcoat; within which, while so employed, his eye was unavoidably drawn from its close connexion with the frightful circumstances of the moment, by a piece of crushed paper, on which the word "Poison," in the conspicuous characters already described, was nevertheless strikingly visible. Alfred snatched up this fatal witness; it was a part of what he had seen in the morning, and had but too evidently been thrust into the bosom as a place of concealment after its contents had been emptied into the goblet; nay, it had still a considerable portion of the powder lurking in its folds. The terrible conviction that his precaution had been too late, and that his brother had assuredly swallowed the poison, flashed at once upon Alfred, fearfully strengthened by the appearance of Willoughby laying on the sofa, his eyeballs rolling beneath their closed lids, except when they started wildly open for a second and closed again. He still attempted to speak, but now nearly without the power of articulation, saving that the name of Alfred was more than once distinguishable amid a low rapid murmur, which however soon faded into whispers, then subsided into a mere movement of the lips without sound, and then ceased altogether. By this time the poor sufferer had become quite insensible, and no one had yet answered Alfred's continued calls for help. He now ran to the bell, then to the door, giving orders to the servants, who at length appeared, to fly for the nearest medical aid, adding incoherent directions about bringing antidotes for poison, and even naming arsenic in particular; yet at the same moment, without any direct consciousness of what he was doing, his fingers with a sort of instinctive movement were thrusting within the breast of his own waistcoat, the fatal scrap of paper he had found in his brother's bosom; for all the while that with the aid of servants he was vainly endeavouring to render assistance to Willoughby, confused notions were floating through his mind of the dreadful addition, that in case of the worst, it would be to his poor mother's grief to know that Willoughby had committed the awful crime of putting a period to his own existence; and mingled with these, were thoughts still more disjointed of Christian rites refused to persons guilty of suicide: so that altogether Alfred was actuated, without any power of defining his motives, by a vague sense, that some sort of necessity existed for suppressing the proofs of his brother having wilfully taken the poison. He was of course quite incapable at such a moment of a process of reasoning by which to decide what other supposition it would be either probable or desirable should be formed.

Messengers had been despatched in every direction; yet before any medical man arrived, the convulsions had subsided, and death, accompanied by the most ghastly appearances, taken place.

At length the bustle of an arrival was heard; instead, however, of the expected doctor, Geoffery Arden entered the room.