I care not what becomes of me--I am getting weary of a life
which now must be one of misery and dread." "You must not allow yourself to fall into such a state of mind as this,"
said the doctor, "or you will become a patient of mine very quickly." "I cannot help it." "Well, but be a man. If there are serious evils affecting you, fight out
against them the best way you can." "I cannot." "Come, now, listen to me. We need not, I think, trouble ourselves about
the pane of glass, so come along." He took the arm of Henry and walked on with him a little in advance of
the others. "Henry," he said, "the best way, you may depend, of meeting evils, be
they great or small, is to get up an obstinate feeling of defiance
against them. Now, when anything occurs which is uncomfortable to me, I
endeavour to convince myself, and I have no great difficulty in doing
so, that I am a decidedly injured man." "Indeed!" "Yes; I get very angry, and that gets up a kind of obstinacy, which
makes me not feel half so much mental misery as would be my portion, if
I were to succumb to the evil, and commence whining over it, as many
people do, under the pretence of being resigned." "But this family affliction of mine transcends anything that anybody
else ever endured." "I don't know that; but it is a view of the subject which, if I were
you, would only make me more obstinate." "What can I do?" "In the first place, I would say to myself, 'There may or there may not
be supernatural beings, who, from some physical derangement of the
ordinary nature of things, make themselves obnoxious to living people;
if there are, d--n them! There may be vampyres; and if there are, I defy
them.' Let the imagination paint its very worst terrors; let fear do
what it will and what it can in peopling the mind with horrors. Shrink
from nothing, and even then I would defy them all." "Is not that like defying Heaven?" "Most certainly not; for in all we say and in all we do we act from the
impulses of that mind which is given to us by Heaven itself. If Heaven
creates an intellect and a mind of a certain order, Heaven will not
quarrel that it does the work which it was adapted to do." "I know these are your opinions. I have heard you mention them before." "They are the opinions of every rational person. Henry Bannerworth,
because they will stand the test of reason; and what I urge upon you is,
not to allow yourself to be mentally prostrated, even if a vampyre has
paid a visit to your house. Defy him, say I--fight him. Self-preservation is a great law of nature, implanted in all our hearts;
do you summon it to your aid." "I will endeavour to think as you would have me. I thought more than
once of summoning religion to my aid." "Well, that is religion." "Indeed!" "I consider so, and the most rational religion of all. All that we read
about religion that does not seem expressly to agree with it, you may
consider as an allegory." "But, Mr. Chillingworth, I cannot and will not renounce the sublime
truths of Scripture. They may be incomprehensible; they may be
inconsistent; and some of them may look ridiculous; but still they are
sacred and sublime, and I will not renounce them although my reason may
not accord with them, because they are the laws of Heaven." No wonder this powerful argument silenced Mr. Chillingworth, who was one
of those characters in society who hold most dreadful opinions, and who
would destroy religious beliefs, and all the different sects in the
world, if they could, and endeavour to introduce instead some horrible
system of human reason and profound philosophy. But how soon the religious man silences his opponent; and let it not be
supposed that, because his opponent says no more upon the subject, he
does so because he is disgusted with the stupidity of the other; no, it
is because he is completely beaten, and has nothing more to say. The distance now between the church and the hall was nearly traversed,
and Mr. Chillingworth, who was a very good man, notwithstanding his
disbelief in certain things of course paved the way for him to hell,
took a kind leave of Mr. Marchdale and the brothers, promising to call
on the following morning and see Flora. Henry and George then, in earnest conversation with Marchdale, proceeded
homewards. It was evident that the scene in the vault had made a deep
and saddening impression upon them, and one which was not likely easily
to be eradicated. CHAPTER IX. THE OCCURRENCES OF THE NIGHT AT THE HALL.--THE SECOND APPEARANCE OF THE
VAMPYRE, AND THE PISTOL-SHOT. [Illustration]

Despite the full and free consent which Flora had given to her brothers
to entrust her solely to the care of her mother and her own courage at
the hall, she felt greater fear creep over her after they were gone than
she chose to acknowledge. A sort of presentiment appeared to come over her that some evil was
about to occur, and more than once she caught herself almost in the act
of saying,--

"I wish they had not gone." Mrs. Bannerworth, too, could not be supposed to be entirely destitute of
uncomfortable feelings, when she came to consider how poor a guard she
was over her beautiful child, and how much terror might even deprive of
the little power she had, should the dreadful visitor again make his
appearance. "But it is but for two hours," thought Flora, "and two hours will soon
pass away." There was, too, another feeling which gave her some degree of
confidence, although it arose from a bad source, inasmuch as it was one
which showed powerfully how much her mind was dwelling on the
particulars of the horrible belief in the class of supernatural beings,
one of whom she believed had visited her. That consideration was this. The two hours of absence from the hall of
its male inhabitants, would be from nine o'clock until eleven, and those
were not the two hours during which she felt that she would be most
timid on account of the vampyre. "It was after midnight before," she thought, "when it came, and perhaps
it may not be able to come earlier. It may not have the power, until
that time, to make its hideous visits, and, therefore, I will believe
myself safe." She had made up her mind not to go to bed until the return of her
brothers, and she and her mother sat in a small room that was used as a
breakfast-room, and which had a latticed window that opened on to the
lawn. This window had in the inside strong oaken shutters, which had been
fastened as securely as their construction would admit of some time
before the departure of the brothers and Mr. Marchdale on that
melancholy expedition, the object of which, if it had been known to her,
would have added so much to the terrors of poor Flora.