Page:Glenarvon (Volume 3).djvu/318

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

you; and let him whose conscience trembles, shrink. I cannot fear;

"For, come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but Death that comes at last."

He said, and smiled——that smile so gentle and persuasive, that only to behold it was to love. Suddenly he beheld before him on the smooth wave a form so pale, so changed, that, but for the sternness of that brow, the fixed and hollow gaze of that dark eye, he had not recognized, in the fearful spectre, the form of Lord Avondale "Speak your reproaches as a man would utter them," he said. "Ask of me the satisfaction due for injuries; but stand not thus before me, like a dream, in the glare of day—like a grim vision of the night, in the presence of thousands."—The stern glazed eye moved not: the palpable form continued. Lord Glenarvon gazed till his eyes were strained with the effort, and every faculty was benumbed and overpowered.