The lady seemed less impatient;
she sat no longer looking at me, but across the room, so that her
profile was toward me--and strangely changed, dark and witch-like it
looked. My last hope died as I beheld that jaded face from which the
mask had dropped. I was certain that they intended to crown their
robbery by murder. Why did they not dispatch me at once? What object
could there be in postponing the catastrophe which would expedite their
own safety. I cannot recall, even to myself, adequately the horrors
unutterable that I underwent. You must suppose a real night-mare--I mean
a night-mare in which the objects and the danger are real, and the spell
of corporal death appears to be protractible at the pleasure of the
persons who preside at your unearthly torments. I could have no doubt as
to the cause of the state in which I was.
In this agony, to which I could not give the slightest expression, I saw
the door of the room where the coffin had been, open slowly, and the
Marquis d'Harmonville entered the room.
Chapter XXV
DESPAIR
A moment's hope, hope violent and fluctuating, hope that was nearly
torture, and then came a dialogue, and with it the terrors of despair.
"Thank Heaven, Planard, you have come at last," said the Count, taking
him with both hands by the arm, and clinging to it and drawing him
toward me.
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