They commenced late, and continued several hours through the night.

To one of these meetings Don Ferdinand Morales had received a summons as usual.

As the day neared, he became conscious of a strange, indefinable sensation taking possession of heart and mind, as impossible to be explained as to be dismissed.

It was as if some impassable and invisible, but closely-hovering evil were connected with the day, blinding him--as by a heavy pall--to all beyond.

He succeeded in subduing the ascendency of the sensation, in some measure, till the day itself; when, as the hours waned, it became more and more overpowering.