In a few minutes after he had concluded his short but earnest prayer, Agnes returned to let him know that her mamma was better and would presently come in to sit with Jane, whom she could not permit, she said, to regain out of her sight.  Jane had been silent for some time, but the extreme brilliancy of her eyes and the energy of her excitement were too obvious to permit any expectation of immediate improvement.

When her mother and Maria returned, accompanied also by William, she took no note whatsoever of them, nor indeed did she appear to have an eye for anything external to her own deep but unsettled misery.  Time after time they spoke to her as before, each earnestly hoping that some favorite expression or familiar tone of voice might impinge, however slightly, upon her reason, or touch some chord of her affections.  These tender devices of their love, however, all failed; no corresponding emotion was awakened, and they resolved, without loss of time, to see what course of treatment medical advice recommend them to pursue on her behalf.  Accordingly William proceeded with a heavy heart to call in the aid of a gentleman who can bear full testimony to the accuracy of our narrative—­we allude to that able and eminent practitioner, Doctor M’Cormick of.  Belfast, whose powers, of philosophical analysis, and patient investigation are surpassed only by the success of the masterly skill with which he applies them.  The moment he left the room for this purpose, Jane spoke.

“It will be hard,” she said, “and I need not conceal it, for my very thought has a voice at the footstool of the Almighty; the intelligences of other worlds know it; all; the invisible spirits of the universe know it; those that are evil rejoice, and the good would murmur if the fulness of their own happiness permitted them.  No—­no—­I need not conceal it—­hearken, therefore—­hearken;” and she lowered her voice to a whisper—­“the Fawn of Springvale—­Jane Sinclair—­is predestined to eternal misery.  She is a cast-away.  I may therefore speak and raise my voice to warn; who shall dare,” she added, “who shall dare ever to part from the truth!  Those—­those only who have been foredoomed—­like me.  Oh misery, misery, is there no hope? nothing but despair for one so young, and as they said, so gentle, and so beautiful, Alas! alas!  Death to me now is no consoler!”

She clasped her beautiful hands together as she spoke, and looked with a countenance so full of unutterable woe that no heart could avoid participating in her misery.

“Jane, oh darling of all our hearts,” said her weeping mother, “will you not come over and sit beside your mamma—­your mamma, my treasure, who feels that she cannot long live to witness what you suffer.”

“The Fawn of Springvale,” she proceeded, “the gentle Fawn of Springvale, for it was on the account of my gentleness I was so called, is stricken—­the arrow is here—­in her poor broken heart; and what did she do, what did the gentle creature do to suffer or to deserve all this misery?”