SHE remained insensible, or I should rather say a succession of fainting fits, with short intervals of reanimation, prevented her from speaking during the greater part of an hour. My friend, meanwhile, who had introduced Mr. Seymour, had gone in search of him, to his hotel.

I stood in anxious suspense by the side of Agnes, contemplating her sufferings, and silently ruminating upon all the occurrences of the evening. My thoughts took a turn, which seemed to correspond with, and explain, my own secret conclusions. When we believe we have at last seized one end of the clue which unravels a mystery, a thousand trivial circumstances rush in upon us with the force of resistless evidence.

They pass for nothing at the time; but they swell into certain truths, seen through the medium of our preconceived notions. I was as firmly convinced, at the moment, I could pronounce the past fate of Agnes Mandeville, as that I then saw her stretched before me, its melancholy victim: and my heart-what shall I say? It bledit ached-it trembled for her!

I was upon the point of yielding to my wife's repeated solicitations, and sending for our medical attendant, Dr.when Agnes, heaving a deep sigh, and pressing her hand upon her forehead, exclaimed, in a low voice, "Where am I?"

I spoke to her.

"Are you alone?" said she, after a

long pause, which made me apprehensive she would relapse into a state of insensibility.

"I am, now," I replied, as my wife and daughter quitted the room, in obedience to a motion of my hand.

Another and a longer pause ensued, during which I watched intently the expressive workings of the features of the beautiful girl. A limner might have caught from them the finest expressions of the passions; and any one accustomed to read the human mind in its best interpreter (where dissimulation is not the master art), the human face, might have perused, as I did, the struggle between amazement, fear, and hope. "You will not deceive me," said Agnes, as she wiped away the first tears she had shed. "WHO was the person that stood behind me at the organthat whispered in my ear a NAME which only one, save myself, could so pronounce, and that one must have come from the grave to do it-or else but that cannot be! WHO was it?"

Her manner was dreadfully agitated as she repeated a question to which it was evident she could not receive the answer she expected without dismay. When I replied that Mr. Seymour was the person who stood beside her at the organ, she interrupted me.

"I did not ask you," she exclaimed, 66 by what name he is known; but wWHO he is whence he came and, if you can tell so much, why he came here to breathe a word of madness into my slumbering soul?”

I attempted to remind her of what I had mentioned respecting Mr. Seymour, when I told her he was coming. Again she interrupted me.

"Can you

"Good God!" she cried. not understand me better than to tell me Mr. Seymour is your friend's friend, and has been your guest to-day? I know all that—but I shall never, never know how the thing that shook me so came to pass, if you can tell me no more than that. You call him Seymour, who never bore that name; him, too, who is now as nameless as the cause why I amn the wretched being you see-him who is in the grave! Yes, yes; of that I am at least assured, no matter how incomprehensible the visit I have had. But it is terrible to think there is no impassable barrier for the dead; that they can come

back, and without the power to be of this world again, can rekindle in the depths of a heart from which they are dissevered, the smouldering passions which first started into life at their call. Oh! this is fearful! From henceforth I shall live in hourly expectation of horrible visits like this one-coming I know not when, nor how, nor why!"

I reasoned with her, and she listened to me with seeming attention. I related how I had become acquainted with Mr. Seymour; repeated all I had learned respecting him from my friend; assured her it was he, and he alone, who had stood by her while playing; and concluded by mentioning what Frances had observed, that he bent over her, and whispered something in her ear.

"I remember," said Agnes, as if speaking to herself, rather than replying to my discourse, "that beautiful morning in early spring, when we walked by the margin of the quiet stream that flowed through my father's grounds! He bade me swear a mutual oath, that whoso first should die, and after death, find it permitted to return to this world-in whatever strange mysterious way permitted— should reveal the secret at such a time and manner as might be. And I remember the summer evening, when I played to him that wild unskilful air, which has no meaning in it for those who love the set harmony of studied sounds, but to which he listened with emotions kindred to the feelings that inspired my own touch, the trembling hand he laid on mine, and said, Do you forget our oath? Then I trembled too, as I looked at him; for in his eyes there was a marvellous expression, and his face grew suddenly pale; But before I could answer, he continued,

If ever my spirit comes to thee, Agnes, it will be when strains like these summon it!' I have played them often; and they have heard mesay, (wondering, I doubt not) wherefore, that I had been holding converse with the past, having miraculous speech with the dead. But never, till this night, did I hear the dead! Never till this night did the voice that enthralled me fall upon my ear, other than in the excited imaginings of my own rapt senses. Oh, God! What a space has been blotted out, carrying back my soul to a period which now seems to embrace it again with all the fresh and lively horror of but an hour ago!"