Shortly before eleven the baronet rose and took his departure, Mrs. Slingsby ringing the drawing-room bell for the servant, to open the front door for him, with a ceremony the object of which was to let every one in the house know that he had departed, and the hour at which he went—in case of any exposure following the dread plot now in progress!

Mrs. Slingsby and Rosamond then remained in conversation for a few minutes, the topic being the excellent qualities of Sir Henry Courtenay.

"Rosamond, my love," at length said Mrs. Slingsby, "before you retire to your own chamber, have the kindness to lock the side-board in the drawing-room and bring me the keys. For really servants are so neglectful——"

The beautiful girl departed with the alacrity of an obliging disposition to execute this little commission:—but the moment she had quitted the drawing-room, Mrs. Slingsby emptied the dark contents of a very small phial into the only half-finished glass of Port wine which Rosamond had left.

The infamous woman then resumed her recumbent position upon the sofa; and—oh! the abominable mockery!—appeared to be occupied with her Bible, when the artless, innocent, and unsuspecting maiden returned to the room.

"Here are the keys, my dear madam," said Rosamond; "and every thing is safe down stairs. I shall now wish you a good night's rest."

"Finish your wine, my love, before you retire," observed Mrs. Slingsby, in a softly persuasive tone: "I am not mean, but you know that I am averse to waste in any shape."

Rosamond blushed at having merited the species of reproach thus conveyed, and drank the contents of her wine-glass: then, as it struck her that the flavour of the wine was somewhat less pleasant than it should be—but without attaching the least importance to the idea, and forgetting it altogether a moment afterwards—she ate a small piece of bread to take away the disagreeable taste.

"Good night, my dear madam," said the maiden, bending over the pious lady and kissing her cheek.

"Good night, Rosamond my love," returned Mrs. Slingsby. "I shall remain here for a quarter of an hour to perform my usual devotional exercises; and then I shall retire to my own chamber."

Rosamond withdrew, and sped to the room prepared for her.

She felt wearied, and made haste to lay aside her garments and arrange her hair. But in the midst of her occupation a sensation of deep drowsiness came over her; and she was glad to step into bed as speedily as possible—omitting, for perhaps the first time since her childhood, to kneel down first in prayer.

A minute afterwards—and she was sound asleep.

Three persons at that precise period had their minds filled with the image of Rosamond!

In the solitude of his chamber, at his lonely cottage, Mr. Torrens endured the torments of the damned,—mental torments, indescribably more severe than the most agonising of physical pain could possibly be.

Mercenary—selfish—cold—callous as he was, he could not stifle the still small voice of conscience, which told him he had done a flagrant—a vile—an awful deed, which would fill his cup with a bitterness, that no earthly pleasure, no mundane reward, could possibly counteract or change.

He felt that he was a monster in human shape: he was afraid to catch a glimpse of his own countenance in the glass—for when he once surveyed it rapidly, its workings were horrible to behold!

To sell his daughter for the filthy lucre which had tempted him!—It was horrible—atrocious!

And then,—then, at that very moment while he was pacing his chamber, the fell deed might be in consummation!

He walked to the window:—how black was the night—how menacing were those clouds that seemed laden with storm!

He started back with a look of horrified amazement: was there not some dreadful shape in the air?—assumed not those clouds the form of a tremendous being, with a countenance of lowering vengeance and awful threatenings?

No: it was fancy—and yet the temporary creation of that fancy was dreadful to behold,—as cloud piled on cloud, for an instant wore the semblance of a supernal, moving phantom, black and menacing with impending storm!

The guilty, wretched father clenched his fists—gnashed his teeth—knit his brows—and compressed his lips together to prevent his voice from suddenly shrieking forth in accents of heart-felt agony.

Having remained for about twenty minutes in the drawing-room, Mrs. Slingsby summoned her maid, by whose assistance she gained her own chamber—although she in reality no more required such aid than did the servant who afforded it.

The maid helped her mistress to divest herself of her clothing, and then retired.

And now Mrs. Slingsby, instead of seeking her couch—that couch which had been the scene of guilty pleasure, when Jacob Smith had lain concealed beneath it—seated herself in a large arm-chair, to wait until the house was quiet.

"I could wish that any thing rather than this was to take place!" she murmured two or three times. "Heaven only knows what will be the end of it! But Henry appears so confident of being able to appease her—so certain of reducing her even to the position of one who beseeches instead of menacing—that I am inclined to suppose he has well weighed all the difficulties of his task. At all events he has promised to spare me—to make me appear innocent! But will Rosamond be so deceived? No—no: she will view me with suspicion—her eyes will gradually open——And yet," thought Mrs. Slingsby, suddenly interrupting the current of her reflections, "she will be so completely in my power—at my mercy,—her honour will be in my hands—her reputation will depend on my secresy——Oh! how I wish this night was past!" she cried passionately: "for the deed which is to mark it, is horrible to contemplate!"

And the third person whose mind was so full of the image of Rosamond Torrens, at the time when she lay down—beauteous and chaste virgin as she was—to rest beneath the roof of one whom, in her ingenuous confidence, she believed to be a pattern of female excellence and virtue,—that third person was Sir Henry Courtenay.

The baronet, on quitting Mrs. Slingsby's house, had returned home in his carriage, which was at the door ready to convey him thither; and, on entering his abode, he had immediately repaired to his own chamber.

Dispensing with the services of his valet, he sate down to pass away in voluptuous reflections the hour that must elapse before he could set forth again, to return to the dwelling of his mistress in Old Burlington Street.

He was of that age when the physical powers somewhat require the stimulus of an ardent and excited imagination; and he now began to gloat in anticipation of the joys which he promised himself to experience in the ruin of the hapless Rosamond.

Remorse and compunction touched him not:—if he thought of the grief that was to ensue, it was merely because he re-arranged in his head all the details of the eloquent representations he must make to soothe that woe! Besides, his licentious imagination represented to him the beauteous Rosamond, more beauteous in her tears; and he had worked himself up to a pitch of such maddening desire, by the time it was necessary for him to sally forth, that he would not have resigned his expected prize—no, not if the ruin and disgrace of ten thousand families were to ensue.

Leaving his house stealthily, by a means of egress at the back, Sir Henry Courtenay hastened back to Old Burlington Street.

A few moments after he had reached the immediate vicinity of Mrs. Slingsby's residence, the clocks of the West-end churches proclaimed the hour of one.

That was the appointed time for his admission into the house.

Nor had he long to wait—for the front-door was soon opened noiselessly and cautiously, and by a person bearing no light: but the voice which whispered, "Is it you, Henry?" was that of Mrs. Slingsby.

And noiselessly and cautiously, too, she led the way up stairs, he having previously put off his shoes, which he carried in his hand.

At the door of her own bed-room, Mrs. Slingsby made the baronet pause for an instant while she procured a taper; and as she handed it to him, and the light revealed their countenances to each other, they shrank from each other's gaze,—for human nature at that instant asserted its rightful empire, and while the woman recoiled with horror from the man who was about to commit an awful outrage on a member of her own sex, the man felt a momentary loathing for the woman who was aiding and abetting in the work of this foul night.

Mrs. Slingsby hurriedly pointed towards a door at the bottom of the passage, in the most retired part of the house; and she then retreated into her own room, a prey to feelings which a convict in Newgate need not have envied.

Meantime Sir Henry Courtenay had passed on to the extremity of the passage: and now his hand is upon the door.

He opens that door—he enters—he closes and fastens it behind him.

Advancing towards the bed, he holds the taper so that its light falls upon the pillow; and the soft, mellow lustre of the wax-candle reveals a charming countenance, with flushed cheeks and with rosy lips apart.

For Rosamond's slumber is uneasy, though profound,—doubtless the effect of laudanum upon the nerves of one so entirely unaccustomed to its use, and who has imbibed so large a dose!

And one of those flushed cheeks reposed on a round, full, and naked arm, like a red rose-leaf upon Parian marble;—and the other arm was thrown over the bed-clothes, which had been somewhat disturbed by the uneasiness of the maiden's sleep, and left exposed the polished shoulders of dazzling whiteness and the bosom of virgin rotundity and plumpness.

Oh! what a charming picture was thus revealed to the eyes of the lustful miscreant, whose desires were increased to almost raging madness by the spectacle!

He placed the taper on the mantel, and hastened to lay aside—nay, almost to tear off his garments; and in less than three minutes he was lying by the side of the young virgin.

But scarcely had his rude hand invaded the treasures of her bosom, when she awoke with a faint scream and a sudden start—the result of some disagreeable dream; and then the baronet clasped her with all the fury of licentiousness in his arms.

A few moments elapsed ere she was aroused sufficiently to comprehend the dreadful—the horrible truth; but when the torpor produced by the laudanum had somewhat subsided, she became a prey to the most frightful alarms, produced by the conviction that some one had invaded the sanctity of her couch—and a glance showed her the features of Sir Henry Courtenay.

She would have given vent to her anguish and her horror in appalling screams; but he placed his hand over her mouth—he muttered fearful menaces in her ears—he called God to witness his resolution to possess her; and, though she became bewildered and dismayed—though her brain whirled, and her reason seemed to be deserting her—yet she battled with the ravisher—she maintained a desperate, an awful struggle,—and so unrelenting was the violence which he used to restrain and overpower her, that murder would have perhaps been done, had not the poor victim become insensible in his arms!

And then her ruin was accomplished.

Oh! ye clouds, laden with storm, why gave ye not forth your forked lightnings—why sent ye not abroad your thunders—to smite the hero of that foul night?

For, oh! while the father was still pacing his chamber in his own dwelling, the hell that raged in his breast defying all hope of slumber,—while, too, the no less infamous woman who had pandered to this work of ruin, was trembling rather for what might be the consequences than for the deed itself,—there, in that room to which Rosamond had retired in the pride of innocence and chastity—there was she despoiled—there became she the victim of the miscreant ravisher!

"Release me—let me depart—let me fly!" implored the wretched Rosamond, in a tone so subdued with anguish and with weakness, that there was no fear of its alarming the house.

"Rosamond, hear me—I beseech you!" exclaimed the baronet, as he held her by the arms in such a manner that she could not escape from the bed. "Hear reason, if you can! What would you do? Whither can you fly? The past cannot be recalled; but there is much to think of for the future. The occurrence of this night is a secret known only to yourself and to me: your dishonour need never transpire to the world?"

"Oh! my God! my God!" murmured Rosamond, in a tone of ineffable anguish: "my dishonour!—my dishonour!"

And she repeated the word—the terrible word, in so thrilling, penetrating, and yet subdued a voice, that even the remorseless baronet was for a moment touched.

"O Rosamond!" he said, in a hurried and excited manner; "do not repine so bitterly for what cannot be recalled! Think how I love you, dearest one—remember that my passion for thee amounted to a frenzy,—and it was in frenzy that I acted thus. Instead of loathing me——"

"No—no, I do not loathe you!—my God—no!" said Rosamond, becoming the least degree calmer. "I now perceive how dependant I am upon you—how necessary it is that your love should console me! But my dear father—should he learn his daughter's disgrace—Oh! heaven, have mercy upon me!"

And she once more burst into an agony of weeping.

"Rosamond—Rosamond, compose yourself!" said Sir Henry Courtenay, with that tenderness of tone which he so well knew how to assume, and on which he had so much relied as an emollient means to be applied to soothe the grief of the victim of his desires. "Shall I repeat how deeply I love thee—how ardently I adore thee? Oh! my best beloved, do not thus abandon yourself to the wildness of a vain and useless despair!"

"But have I not been made the victim of a dreadful conspiracy?" said Rosamond; "was I not inveigled hither to be ruined? Oh! I will fly—I will fly—I will hasten home to my father—I will throw myself at his feet and tell him all—and he will pardon and avenge me!"

Again she endeavoured to spring from the bed; but Sir Henry Courtenay held her back—and, through sheer exhaustion, she fell weeping on his breast.

Then the task of consoling her—or rather of somewhat moderating the excess of her anguish, became more easy; and the baronet reasoned and vowed—argued and protested—and pleaded for pardon so touchingly and with so much apparent contrition, that Rosamond began to believe there was indeed some extenuation for one who loved her so passionately, and who had been led away by the frenzy of those feelings of which she was the object.

"Oh! why, my adored girl, are you so beautiful?" murmured the baronet: "rather attribute my crime to the influence—the irresistible influence of thine own charms, than to any deeply-seated wickedness on my part! I should have become raving mad for love of thee, had not the fury of my passion hurried me on to that point, when, reckless of all consequences, I had recourse to this stratagem. I know that my conduct is horrible—that it is vile and base in the extreme;—but I sue to thee for pardon,—I, so proud and haughty—yes, I implore thee, my darling Rosamond, to forgive me! And, oh! if all the remainder of my life, devoted to thine happiness, can atone for my turpitude of this night,—if the most unwearied affection—the most tender love can impart consolation to thee, my angel—then wilt thou yet smile upon me, and the past shall be forgotten."

"Then you will make me your wife?" murmured Rosamond.

"Yes, sweet girl—thou shall become mine—mine in the sight of heaven!" said the baronet, who would have made any pledge at that moment, in order to solace and reassure his victim.

"But wherefore not have told me that you loved me—why not have demanded my hand of my father, and have married me as Clarence did my sister?" asked Rosamond, a doubt striking to her heart's core.

"I said many things to make you understand how dear you were to me," answered the baronet; "and you did not comprehend my meaning. Remember you not that, one day when I called at your father's house, I met you alone in the parlour; and as you offered me your hand, I said, 'Happy will the man be on whom this fair hand shall be bestowed!' And on another occasion, when you and I were again alone together, the conversation happened to turn upon death, and I remarked that 'it was dreadful to contemplate the idea of dying, but that I could lay down my life to serve you!'"

"Oh! yes—I remember now!" murmured Rosamond. "And I even thought of those observations after you were gone; and they seemed to afford me pleasure to ponder upon them."

"Do you not now understand, then, dearest angel, how disappointment at finding that I was not at once comprehended, drove me to despair?" said the wily baronet. "Can you not pardon me, if—thus driven to desperation—I vowed to possess you—to make you mine—so that you would be compelled to accept my hand, as you already reigned undisputed mistress over my heart?"

"If you will fulfil your solemn promise to make me your wife, I shall yet be happy—and this dreadful night may be forgotten. No—not forgotten," continued Rosamond, hastily; "because the memory is immortal for such hours of anguish as these! But you will, at least, make all the atonement that lies in your power—and I may yet look the world in the face!"

"Rosamond—my sweet Rosamond, within a month from this time thou shalt be my wife!" said the baronet.

"With that assurance I must console myself," returned the still weeping girl. "And now, I adjure you—by the solemnity of the pledge which you have made me, and which I believe—I implore, you, by that love which you declare you entertain for me,—to leave me this moment!"

The baronet was fearful of reviving the storm of grief which his perfidious language had succeeded in quelling; and he accordingly rose and resumed his apparel.

Not a word was spoken during the two or three minutes which thus passed; and when Sir Henry was once more dressed, he approached the ruined girl, saying, "One embrace, Rosamond, and I leave thee till the morrow."

"One word ere we part," she said, in a hurried and almost hollow tone: "does Mrs. Slingsby know——But surely, surely, she could not have lent herself——And yet," added the bewildered Rosamond, a second time interrupting herself abruptly, "how could you have gained admittance into the house, and in the middle of the night? Oh! heavens, the most fearful suspicions——"

"Calm yourself—compose your feelings, dearest," said the baronet. "Mrs. Slingsby knows that I adore you—is aware that I love you: because the long acquaintance—indeed the sincere friendship which exists between us—prevents me from having any secrets unrevealed to her. But wrong not that amiable, that excellent, that pure-minded woman, by unjust suspicions! I entered her house like a thief—by means of a window accidentally left unfastened; and in the same manner must I escape now. Not for worlds would I have her suspect the occurrences of this night! Therefore, my angel, compose yourself, so that your appearance may not engender any suspicion in her mind when you meet at the breakfast table in the morning:—for, remember, my Rosamond, you will shortly become my wife,—and then, as you yourself observed, you will be enabled to look the world in the face!"

"And until that moment comes," said Rosamond, with a deep sob, "I shall blush and be compelled to cast down my eyes in the presence of every one who knows me. Oh! my God—what cruel fears—what dread thoughts oppress me! And my sister is doubtless so happy! Heaven grant that she may never know the anguish which wrings my heart at this moment!"

"By every thing sacred, I conjure you to compose yourself, Rosamond," exclaimed Sir Henry Courtenay, now afraid to leave her, lest in the dread excitement which was reanimating her, she might lay violent hands upon herself:—for, by the light of the taper, he could perceive that her countenance was ashy pale, and that while she was uttering those last words relative to her sister, her features were suddenly distorted by an expression of intense mental agony.

"Compose myself! Oh! how can I compose myself?" she exclaimed; and then she burst into a torrent of tears.

The baronet knew the female heart too well not to allow her to give full vent to the pearly tide of anguish; and three or four minutes elapsed,—he standing by the bed, contemplating with but little emotion, unless, indeed, it were of lust, the beauteous being whom he had so ruthlessly ruined,—and she burying her face in her hands, the tears trickling between her fingers, and her agonising sobs alone breaking the solemn stillness of the night.

Sir Henry Courtenay waited until the violence of this renewed outburst of ineffable woe had somewhat abated; and then he again endeavoured to console the unhappy victim of his foul desires—the ruined sufferer by his hellish turpitude!

And Rosamond had so much need of solace, and was so dependent on hope for the future to enable her to sustain the almost crushing misery of the present, that she threw herself upon his honour—his mercy—his deceitful promises; and she even smiled—but faintly—oh! very faintly—when he again employed his infernal sophistry to prove the deed of that dread night to be the surest testimony to his ardent love.

At length she was sufficiently composed to induce him to take his departure; and, like a vile snake as he was in heart, he crept away from the chamber of the deflowered—the ravished girl.

As he stole thus stealthily along the passage, he observed a light streaming from Mrs. Slingsby's room, the door of which had been purposely left ajar.

He entered, and found his accomplice still up; nor had the abandoned woman felt the least inclination to retire to rest.

For her mind had been a prey to the most terrible alarms, from the moment when the baronet had first set foot in Rosamond's chamber.

"I have succeeded—and she will not proclaim the outrage to the world," said Sir Henry Courtenay, in a low tone. "I have, moreover, kept my word with you, and have made her believe that you are innocent of any share in the proceeding."

Mrs. Slingsby gave no answer, but bit her under lip forcibly—for vile as she herself was, she could hardly prevent herself from exclaiming to her companion, "You are a black-hearted monster!"

Sir Henry did not, however, notice that she was influenced by any emotion hostile to him; or if he did, he cared not to show that he perceived it;—but, wishing his mistress "good night," he quitted the room, and stole out of the house.