In my house there are proofs and papers that will put them in possession of all, and more than all, they have lost.

But life is a burden of torture I will bear no longer.

The death of him who died for me this night is the crowning tragedy of my miserable life; and if my hour were not at hand, I should not have told you this." "But you have not told me the fearful cause of so much guilt and suffering.

What is behind that mask ?" "Would you, too, see ?" she asked, in a terrible voice, "and die ?" "I have told you it is not in my nature to die easily, and it is something far stronger than mere curiosity makes me ask." "Be it so! The sky is growing red with day-dawn, and I shall never see the sun rise more, for I am already plague-struck!" That sweetest of all voices ceased.

The white hands removed the mask, and the floating coils of hair, and revealed, to Sir Norman's horror-struck gaze, the grisly face and head, and the hollow eye-sockets, the grinning mouth, and fleshless cheeks of a skeleton! He saw it but for one fearful instant--the next, she had thrown up both arms, and leaped headlong into the loathly plague-pit.