The cool air sweeps over her fevered brow, the dampness of the atmosphere chills her bosom, and by slow degrees the flight of madness, caused by the drugged potion, passed from her soul, and the Ladye Annabel is restored to reason and to thought.
Oh! fearful reason, oh! terrible thought, to which madness were joy, insanity, in its wildest flight, happiness the most intense.
“The bride must be widowed, ere she weds a second time!”
She rushed on, never heeding the darkness; she rushed on, never heeding the cold. She might save him yet; oh! even yet she might save him.
And through the dark passages of that deserted part of the monastery she wound, until her hands, extended on either side, touched the opposite walls, wet with moisture, and crawling with vermin; when the echo of the arches, succeeded by a dead, deafening murmur, told Annabel that she strode along a confined corridor, far under ground, growing narrow and yet narrower at every step.
A moment passed, and her extended hands were met by waving folds of tapestry, that swept across her path, and terminated the narrow corridor. Thrusting her hands eagerly among the hangings, she turned them suddenly aside, and started back with surprise, as a broad belt of light was thrown along the gloomy passage. With hushed breath and a throbbing heart, she gazed beyond the hangings of dark leather, and while her blue eyes dilated with wonder and fear, she beheld a strange and startling scene.
Two figures were kneeling upon the floor of an apartment, narrow and confined, as regards dimensions, and square in shape, hung with gorgeous folds of embroidered tapestry, dark-green in hue, with matting of strange pattern and curious device, brought from the far Eastern lands, strewn over the pavement of the room. The only object that broke the uniformity of the place, was a dark robe flung over some massive body in an obscure corner.
The light, clear and brilliant in its flame, placed on the matting between the kneeling men, threw its vivid beams on each face and form, over every line of their features, over every point of their apparel.
The Ladye Annabel stifled an expression of surprise which rose to her lips at the vision of this luxuriously furnished cell, in the midst of gloom and damp, and then with a writhing heart took in the details of this strange picture.