Mr. Lawrence's portly form was bowed feebly, his genial face was seamed with lines of grief and care, while premature silver threads shone amid his chestnut-brown hair.

The ghastly pallor of Lancelot Darling, his wild eyes, his trembling hands, attested how maddening and soul-harrowing was his despair.

"Lance, my poor boy, you have been ill," said the banker, in a gentle tone of sympathy.

"Yes, I have been ill," said Lancelot, brokenly; then almost crushing the banker's hand in his strong, unconscious grasp, he broke out wildly: "Mr. Lawrence, I have come here to beg a favor of you."

"Name it," said Mr. Lawrence, kindly.

"I want the key of your vault. I want to see my Lily's face once more,"

he answered, in an imploring tone.

"Would it be well? Would it be wise?" asked the other in a tone of surprise and pain.

"I do not know, I do not ask," said Lancelot, impetuously. "I only know that my soul hungers for a sight of my darling's face. Do not refuse me, my friend. Let me see her once more before death has obliterated all her beauty!"

"Better think of her, Lance, as when you last saw her in life and health," said the banker uneasily. "She is already changed. You are too weak to bear the agitation that would ensue if I granted your request."

"You refuse me, then," said the young man in a voice of pa.s.sionate grief. "She was to have been my wife ere now, yet you will not suffer me to press one last, long kiss on the cold lips of my darling."

"Oh, do not refuse him," cried Mrs. Vance, gliding forward and laying a persuasive little hand on the banker's arm. "Think of his bleeding heart and blighted hopes. Remember how fondly he loved her. Go with him to the vault, and show him our broken Lily lying asleep in the deep rest she coveted."

Lancelot's heavy, dark eyes flashed a look of grat.i.tude upon the beautiful pleader as she ceased to speak.

The banker paused irresolutely.

"If I thought he could bear it," he murmured.

"I _can_ bear it, I _will_!" said Lancelot, firmly. "Only grant my request."

"The s.e.xton has the key of the vault," said Mr. Lawrence, yielding reluctantly. "I will go with you, Lance."

"Let it be at once then. My carriage is at the gate," said the half frenzied young lover, moving off after a slight bow to Mrs. Vance.

Mr. Lawrence followed him, the door was closed, and the handsome widow stood alone in the center of the splendid drawing-room. She took one or two turns up and down the room, her black dress trailing its gloomy folds over the rich carpet.

"Let him go," she said at last, pausing and clenching her delicate hands together. "Let him go! That marble mask of his beautiful love can but disenchant him. I have already dropped a suspicion of her love into his heart. He does not heed it yet, but no matter, it shall take root, it shall grow, it shall bear fruit an hundredfold! He shall turn to me yet.

I love him with a love pa.s.sing everything, and I will stop at nothing till I call him mine!"

She laughed aloud as the thought of her future triumph swept through her heart. It was a strange, eerie laugh--It sounded as if a beautiful fiend had laughed in Hades.

The elegant carriage, with its high stepping, spirited gray horses, bowled rapidly along the busy streets of New York, and at length paused before the beautiful cemetery in which Mr. Lawrence's vault was situated. The banker then stepped into the s.e.xton's house where he called for the key of the vault. The s.e.xton gave it to him with some surprise at the request, and the gentleman returned to Lancelot Darling who was impatiently pacing a graveled path in the "fair Necropolis of the dead."

The banker paused and laid his hand on the young man's arm.

"I have the key, Lance," he said, "but even now I wish I could persuade you not to enter the vault; I dread the effect on your already weak nerves. Remember what a difference there must be between the blooming Lily you last looked upon and the poor, faded flower in yon gloomy stone vault."

"Mr. Lawrence, you do but torture me," said the young man, with a gesture of wild despair. "However she may be changed let me see her. Yet I cannot believe that that beautiful face can be altered so soon. Cruel death would stay his defacing hand when he looked on such loveliness."

With a sigh of regret the elder man turned and walked on down the shady path. Lancelot followed him, taking no note of the beautiful day and the song of the birds and the fragrance of the rare flowers all around him.

Over the low mounds everywhere gentle hands of affection had planted lovely flowers and shrubs, trying to make grim death beautiful. But he heeded them not as he stopped in front of the marble vault, guarded by a marble angel, and followed Mr. Lawrence into its dim recesses.

They walked down the echoing aisle, between rows of moldy, decaying coffins, and paused with beating hearts and labored breath beside a new casket, loaded with wreaths and crosses of fragrant white hot-house flowers.

The murky air of the charnel house was heavy with the scent of tube-roses, violets and pale white roses. With trembling hands they removed these tokens of affection, until the lid of the coffin was disclosed. With a shudder Lancelot read the inscription on the silver plate:

"LILY LAWRENCE.

"_Aged eighteen._"

Mr. Lawrence drew out the silver screws and removed the lid.

"My G.o.d!" he cried, as he gazed within.

The costly casket was empty. The white satin cushioning that love had devised to make the bed of death a soft one, held the impress of her form, the pillow was lightly dented where her golden head had lain, but the cold form that rested there yesterday with white hands folded over the quiet heart, with pale lips shut over the woful secret of her death, that loved form was gone from their gaze.

CHAPTER IV.

Go with me, kind reader, to the outskirts of the great city; enter with me an humble house; we pa.s.s invisibly inside the locked door, we glide unseen up the staircase, and into a plainly furnished, low-ceiled room.

Our acquaintance, Doctor Pratt, is there--also his co-conspirator, Harold Colville, is there. Both are bending anxiously over a low, white bed where a girlish, rec.u.mbent form lies extended.

At the foot of the bed stands an old crone with gray elf-locks floating under a tawdry black lace cap. Wrinkled, and bent, and witch-like, with beady black eyes and parchment-like skin, she is frightful to look at as she peers curiously into the beautiful white face lying on the pillow.

"Pratt, you have deceived me," Colville breaks out sternly; "all your restoratives have failed, all your potent art is at fault. Look at that marble face, those breathless lips. It is death, not life, we look upon."

"Bah!" said Doctor Pratt. Rising and going to the young lady's head, he gently turned it on one side: at the same time he changed the position of one arm. _Both retained for a short time their new position_ then slowly resumed their former place. He raised her eyelids and they remained open a brief interval, then gently closed again. The beautiful blue eyes they disclosed were neither gla.s.sy nor corpse-like, though fixed in a vacant, unnatural stare. The physician resumed his seat and said, calmly:

"You see, Colville, it is life, not death. I tell you it is that rare, mysterious affection we call _catalepsy_--a state fearfully blending the conditions of life and death--a seeming life in death, or death in life.

It is true that all my remedies have failed: but it is equally true that life is not extinct, though the spark may perish from exhaustion if she does not soon revive. It is now four days since the cold steel entered her side and this mysterious unconsciousness fell upon her. But the horrid spell must soon be broken, or death will ensue as a consequence of loss of blood and vitality."

They withdrew a little further from the bed, Pratt still keeping a watchful eye upon the patient, while Colville tried to keep his roving glance away from the death-like face that sent a shudder of fear now and then along his frame. It seemed fearfully like death despite the learned theory of the case which Doctor Pratt was patiently explaining to him.

"You said the first time we talked of this that you believed Miss Lawrence had been murdered," said Colville, suddenly. "Why did you form that opinion despite the contrary evidence?"

"There was no evidence to the contrary," said the dark physician, complacently. "I formed it on the evidence of my own eyes. True, Miss Lawrence's door was locked on the inside; but"--he paused a moment to give effect to his words--"but a heavy, luxuriant honeysuckle vine was trained from the ground up to her window in the second story. The murderer, or murderess, entered her room by the door, turned the key, perpetrated the dreadful deed, and escaped by sliding down the thickly-twisted vine to the ground."

"That is only your theory, doctor, I suppose."

"It is a fact, not theory, monsieur. I furtively examined the vine myself. It was broken in places, bruised in its tender parts, and quant.i.ties of leaves and flowers were strewn upon the ground. It plainly showed that a heavy body had slid down upon it and injured it. I wonder that it escaped the dull eyes of the jury."

"You are an astute man, doctor. Who, then, was the a.s.sa.s.sin of one so young and fair?"

"I do not know, but I half suspected the beautiful woman who lives at Lawrence's--a sort of cousin, I think--a Mrs. Vance by name. Her evidence went a little further than the rest. She a.s.serted that she heard the young lady lock her door that night--she seemed to favor the idea of suicide also by pressing a theory of her own, that Miss Lawrence had a secret trouble--was subject to fits of abstraction and depression.