He looked round for the things she had worn, hoping she had taken them off and retired to rest, but they were not to be seen; and with a cold sinking of the heart, he went noiselessly across the room, and to the bed.

It was empty, and showed no trace of having been otherwise since he and the pest-cart driver had borne from it the apparently lifeless form of Leoline.
Yes, she was gone; and Sir Norman turned for a moment so sick with utter dread, that he leaned against one of the tall carved posts, and hated himself for having left her with a heartlessness that his worst enemy could not have surpassed.

Then aroused into new and spasmodic energy by the exigency of the case, he seized the lamp, and going out to the hall, made the house ring from basement to attic with her name.

No reply, but that hollow, melancholy echo that sounds so lugubriously through empty houses, was returned; and he jumped down stairs with an impetuous rush, flinging back every door in the hall below with a crash, and flying wildly from room to room.

In solemn grim repose they lay; but none of them held the bright figure in rose-satin he sought.