I
applied a glass to his lips--but there was not a breath to stain it. I
felt his wrist--but there was no pulse. I placed my hand on his
heart--there was not the slightest vibration. In a few minutes the body
was perfectly cold. I did not quit the room till nearly an hour
after--the body gave no signs of returning animation. “Unhappy circumstances detained me long abroad. I was in various parts
of the Continent, and every where I was haunted with the report of
Melmoth being still alive. To these reports I gave no credit, and
returned to England in the full conviction of his being dead. _Yet it
was Melmoth who walked and spoke with you the last night of our
meeting._ My eyes never more faithfully attested the presence of living
being. It was Melmoth himself, such as I beheld him many years ago, when
my hairs were dark and my steps were firm. I am changed, but he is the
same--time seems to have forborne to touch him from terror. By what
means or power he is thus enabled to continue his posthumous and
preternatural existence, it is impossible to conceive, unless the
fearful report that every where followed his steps on the Continent, be
indeed true.”

“Elinor, impelled by terror and wild curiosity, inquired into that
report which dreadful experience had anticipated the meaning of. “Seek
no farther,” said the minister, “you know already more than should ever
have reached the human ear, or entered into the conception of the human
mind. Enough that you have been enabled by Divine Power to repel the
assaults of the evil one--the trial was terrible, but the result will be
glorious. Should the foe persevere in his attempts, remember that he has
been already repelled amid the horrors of the dungeon and of the
scaffold, the screams of Bedlam and the flames of the Inquisition--he is
yet to be subdued by a foe that he deemed of all others the least
invincible--the withered energies of a broken heart. He has traversed
the earth in search of victims, “Seeking whom he might devour,”--and has
found no prey, even where he might seek for it with all the cupidity of
infernal expectation. Let it be your glory and crown of rejoicing, that
even the feeblest of his adversaries has repulsed him with a power that
will always annihilate his.” * * * * * * * *

“Who is that faded form that supports with difficulty an emaciated
invalid, and seems at every step to need the support she gives?--It is
still Elinor tending John. Their path is the same, but the season is
changed--and that change seems to her to have passed alike on the mental
and physical world. It is a dreary evening in Autumn--the stream flows
dark and turbid beside their path--the blast is groaning among the
trees, and the dry discoloured leaves are sounding under their
feet--their walk is uncheered by human converse, for one of them no
longer thinks, and seldom speaks! “Suddenly he gives a sign that he wishes to be seated--it is complied
with, and she sits beside him on the felled trunk of a tree. He declines
his head on her bosom, and she feels with delighted amazement, a few
tears streaming on it for the first time for years--a soft but conscious
pressure of her hand, seems to her like the signal of reviving
intelligence--with breathless hope she watches him as he slowly raises
his head, and fixes his eyes--God of all consolation, there is
intelligence in his glance! He thanks her with an unutterable look for
all her care, her long and painful labour of love! His lips are open,
but long unaccustomed to utter human sounds, the effort is made with
difficulty--again that effort is repeated and fails--his strength is
exhausted--his eyes close--his last gentle sigh is breathed on the bosom
of faith and love--and Elinor soon after said to those who surrounded
her bed, that she died happy, since he knew her once more! She gave one
parting awful sign to the minister, which was understood and answered! CHAPTER XXXIII. Cum mihi non tantum furesque feræque suëtæ,
    Hunc vexare locum, curæ sunt atque labori;
    Quantum carminibus quæ versant atque venenis,
    Humanos animos. HORACE. “It is inconceivable to me,” said Don Aliaga to himself, as he pursued
his journey the next day--“it is inconceivable to me how this person
forces himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have no more
application to me than the legend of the Cid, and may be as apocryphal
as the ballad of Roncesvalles--and now he has ridden by my side all day,
and, as if to make amends for his former uninvited and unwelcome
communicativeness, he has never once opened his lips.”

“Senhor,” said the stranger, then speaking for the first time, as if he
read Aliaga’s thoughts--“I acknowledge myself in error for relating to
you a narrative in which you must have felt there was little to interest
you. Permit me to atone for it, by recounting to you a very brief one,
in which I flatter myself you will be disposed to feel a very peculiar
interest.”--“You assure me it will be brief,” said Aliaga. “Not only so,
but the last I shall obtrude on your patience,” replied the stranger. “On that condition,” said Aliaga, “in God’s name, brother, proceed. And
look you handle the matter discreetly, as you have said.”

“There was,” said the stranger, “a certain Spanish merchant, who set out
prosperously in business; but, after a few years, finding his affairs
assume an unfavourable aspect, and being tempted by an offer of
partnership with a relative who was settled in the East Indies, had
embarked for those countries with his wife and son, leaving behind him
an infant daughter in Spain.”--“That was exactly my case,” said Aliaga,
wholly unsuspicious of the tendency of this tale. “Two years of successful occupation restored him to opulence, and to the
hope of vast and future accumulation. Thus encouraged, our Spanish
merchant entertained ideas of settling in the East Indies, and sent over
for his young daughter with her nurse, who embarked for the East Indies
with the first opportunity, which was then very rare.”--“This reminds me
exactly of what occurred to myself,” said Aliaga, whose faculties were
somewhat obtuse. “The nurse and infant were supposed to have perished in a storm which
wrecked the vessel on an isle near the mouth of a river, and in which
the crew and passengers perished. It was said that the nurse and child
alone escaped; that by some extraordinary chance they arrived at this
isle, where the nurse died from fatigue and want of nourishment, and the
child survived, and grew up a wild and beautiful daughter of nature,
feeding on fruits,--and sleeping amid roses,--and drinking the pure
element,--and inhaling the harmonies of heaven,--and repeating to
herself the few Christian words her nurse had taught her, in answer to
the melody of the birds that sung to her, and of the stream whose waves
murmured in accordance to the pure and holy music of her unearthly
heart.”--“I never heard a word of this before,” muttered Aliaga to
himself. The stranger went on.