Agnes’s enthusiasm abandoned her on seeing that that voice to which her own dearest sister ever sweetly and lovingly responded, fell upon her ear as an idle and unmeaning sound.  Her face became deadly pale, and her lip quivered, as she again addressed the unconscious girl.  Once more she took her hand in hers, and placing herself before her, put her fingers to her cheek in order to arrest her attention.

“Jane, look upon me; look upon me;—­that’s a sweet child,—­look upon me.  Sure I am Agnes—­your own Agnes, who will break her heart if my sweet sister doesn’t speak to her.”

The stricken one raised her head, and looked into her face; but it was, alas! too apparent that she saw her not; for the eye, though smiling, was still vacant.  Again her lips moved, and she spoke so as to be understood towards the door through which she had entered.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, in the same low, placid voice, “yes, he is beautiful!  Is he not beautiful?  Fatal beauty!—­fatal beauty!  It is a fatal thing—­it is a fatal thing!—­but he is very, very beautiful!”

“Jane,” said Maria, taking her hand from Agnes’s, “Jane, speak to Maria, dear.  Am not I, too, your own Maria? that loves you not less than—­my darling, darling child—­they do not live that love you better than your own Maria;—­in pity, darling, in pity speak to me!”

The only reply was a smile, that rose into the murmuring music of a low laugh; but this soon ceased, her countenance became troubled, and her finely-pencilled brows knit, as if with an inward sense of physical pain.  William, her father, her mother, each successively addressed her, but to no purpose.  Though a slight change had taken place, they could not succeed in awakening her reason to a perception of the circumstances in which she was placed.  They only saw that the unity of her thought, or of the image whose beauty veiled the faculties of her mind was broken, and that some other memory, painful in its nature, had come in to disturb the serenity of her unreal happiness; but this, which ought to have given them hope, only alarmed them the more.  The father, while these tender and affecting experiments were tried, sat beside her, his eyes laboring under a weight of deep and indescribable calamity, and turning from her face to the faces of those who attempted to recall her reason, with a mute vehemence of sorrow which called up from the depths of their sister’s misery a feeling of compassion for the old man whom she had so devotedly loved.

“My father’s heart is breaking,” said William, groaning aloud, and covering his face with his hands.  “Father, your face frightens me more than Jane’s;—­don’t, father, don’t.  She is young,—­it will pass away—­and father dear where is your reliance upon her—­upon her aid!”

“Dear Henry,” said his wife, “you should be our support.  It is the business of your life to comfort and sustain the afflicted.”

“Papa,” said Agnes, “come with me for a few minutes, until you recover the shock which—­which——­”