Chapter 12 - Page 2

"Are you ill, Miss Alice?" said the sweet, soothing tones of Cecilia
Howard; "you are, indeed you are: lean on me, that I may lead you to
your apartment."

"Did you hear it, or was it only fancy?" she answered, her cheek
blanched to the whiteness of death, and her whole frame shuddering as if
in convulsions; "say, did you hear it, too?"

"I have heard nothing but the voice of my uncle, who is standing near
you, anxious, as we all are, for your recovery from this dreadful
agitation."

Alice still gazed wildly from face to face. Her eye did not rest
satisfied with dwelling on those who surrounded her, but surveyed, with
a sort of frantic eagerness, the figures and appearance of the three
men, who stood in humble patience, the silent and unmoved witnesses of
this extraordinary scene. At length she veiled her eyes with both her
hands, as if to shut out some horrid vision, and then removing them, she
smiled languidly, as she signed for Cecilia to assist her from the room.
To the polite and assiduous offers of the gentlemen, she returned no
other thanks than those conveyed in her looks and gestures; but when the
sentinels who paced the gallery were passed, and the ladies were alone,
she breathed a long, shivering sigh, and found an utterance.

"'Twas like a voice from the silent grave!" she said, "but it could be
no more than mockery. No, no, 'tis a just punishment for letting the
image of the creature fill the place that should be occupied only with
the Creator. Ah! Miss Howard, Miss Plowden, ye are both young--in the
pride of your beauty and loveliness--but little do ye know, and less do
ye dread, the temptations and errors of a sinful world."

"Her thoughts wander!" whispered Katherine, with anxious tenderness,
"some awful calamity has affected her intellect!"

"Yes, it must be; my sinful thoughts have wandered, and conjured sounds
that it would have been dreadful to hear in truth, and within these
walls," said Alice, more composedly, smiling with a ghastly expression,
as she gazed on the two beautiful, solicitous maidens who supported her
yielding person. "But the moment of weakness is passed, and I am better;
aid me to my room, and return, that you may not interrupt the reviving
harmony between yourselves and Colonel Howard. I am now better--nay, I
am quite restored."

"Say not so, dear Miss Alice," returned Cecilia; "your face denies what
your kindness to us induces you to utter; ill, very ill, you are, nor
shall even your own commands induce me to leave you."

"Remain, then," said Miss Dunscombe, bestowing a look of grateful
affection