CHAPTER XXVII.

WHAT MRS. BLEEK SAW.

FOR the better understanding of what we shall still call Mrs. Bleek's dream, it is necessary to go back a little, and, the author being omniscient, peep at a strange scene going on in those vast and dreary receptacles for the dead, the vaults beneath the Abbey Church.

An open coffin, with four men and a woman grouped about it.

Two of the men hold lanterns, whose light streams down upon the pale and ex

quisitely beautiful face of a shrouded figure, which the coffin contains.

The features are those of Gertrude Wentworth.

The woman standing at the coffin's foot is Diana Rockwood.

Near to her, pale, and for once silent, is her husband.

At the head of the coffin, and peering curiously down into the waxen face, is Doctor Malyon; while, the bearer of the second lantern (Rockwood holds the first), is the hunchback, Benjamin Darknoll.

Just within the circle of light, and leaning upon an iron bar, is the fourth man, Powder Blue, whose ruffianly visage betrays an emotion but rarely seen there.

They all speak in whispers; not that they have any fear of being overheard. On such a night, and in such a place, intrusion is impossible.

"It looks terribly like death!" said Mrs. Rockwood, with a shudder.

She addressed the doctor, who, the only thoroughly self-possessed person of the party, smilingly replied, "True, my dear madam-quite true; but appearances in this, as in very many other cases, are deceitful. You will remember, if I may illustrate a fact by a fiction, the sad work appearances made in that celebrated affair of Capulet versus Montague. The pulse of

life, however feebly it may beat, is as surely here as in yourself. Have you opened the other coffin?" and the doctor turned to the man Bradley, still heavily lounging on his crowbar.

"Yes" (sulkily); "and I'd rather crack a dozen cribs, with a whole army of peelers. looking on, than do the kind of thing over again! It's worse than robbin' a church!"

"Ha, ha ?" chuckled the doctor. "It does me good to hear you express yourself in the way you do, Mr. Bradley. The respect you have for the institutions of your country is, to say the least, delightful! Now," he continued, turning briskly to Benjamin Darknoll, and at the same time consulting his watch by the light of the latter's lantern, "the exchange must be made at once, as the carriage must have arrived by this time, and we have not a moment to lose. May I crave your assistance, my dear madam ?"

a tenderness

Tenderly -very tenderly owing half its origin to fear-the lithe and graceful form of Gertrude Wentworth was lifted from its ghastly couch, and immediately enshrouded in a large cloak by Mrs. Rockwood, whose nerve, after the doctor's, appeared to be the least shaken of this strange company.

"It's a wonderful likeness!" said the

doctor, again peering down into Rose

Ayliffe's face.

"In death, I should say,

still more remarkable than in life. Ah! Sir Hugh was a gay man in his time."

The remark was repented of as soon as uttered, for the proud face of Diana Rockwood deepened to a dark red, and her eyes flashed with a-well, if a look could kill, there would have been there and then an end to the doctor.

The lodge-keeper, ever quiet and watchful, came to the rescue.

"Most such likenesses are accidental," he said. "This must have been purely so, for, till within the last few years, Rose Ayliffe was a stranger to this place."

While speaking, they had placed the girlish figure of Gertrude, now shrouded in the cloak, upon a sort of stone bench, the head reclining upon Mrs. Rockwood's