I will advise you where to plant yourselves;
Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time,
The moment on 't; for 't must be done to-night.
MACBETH
Emily was somewhat surprised, on the following day, to find that Annette
had heard of Madame Montoni's confinement in the chamber over the
portal, as well as of her purposed visit there, on the approaching
night.
That the circumstance, which Barnardine had so solemnly enjoined
her to conceal, he had himself told to so indiscreet an hearer as
Annette, appeared very improbable, though he had now charged her with
a message, concerning the intended interview. He requested, that Emily
would meet him, unattended, on the terrace, at a little after midnight,
when he himself would lead her to the place he had promised; a proposal,
from which she immediately shrunk, for a thousand vague fears darted
athwart her mind, such as had tormented her on the preceding night,
and which she neither knew how to trust, or to dismiss. It frequently
occurred to her, that Barnardine might have deceived her, concerning
Madame Montoni, whose murderer, perhaps, he really was; and that he had
deceived her by order of Montoni, the more easily to draw her into some
of the desperate designs of the latter.
The terrible suspicion, that
Madame Montoni no longer lived, thus came, accompanied by one not less
dreadful for herself.
Unless the crime, by which the aunt had suffered,
was instigated merely by resentment, unconnected with profit, a motive,
upon which Montoni did not appear very likely to act, its object must be
unattained, till the niece was also dead, to whom Montoni knew that
his wife's estates must descend. Emily remembered the words, which had
informed her, that the contested estates in France would devolve to her,
if Madame Montoni died, without consigning them to her husband, and the
former obstinate perseverance of her aunt made it too probable, that
she had, to the last, withheld them. At this instant, recollecting
Barnardine's manner, on the preceding night, she now believed, what she
had then fancied, that it expressed malignant triumph. She shuddered at
the recollection, which confirmed her fears, and determined not to
meet him on the terrace.
Soon after, she was inclined to consider these
suspicions as the extravagant exaggerations of a timid and harassed
mind, and could not believe Montoni liable to such preposterous
depravity as that of destroying, from one motive, his wife and her
niece. She blamed herself for suffering her romantic imagination to
carry her so far beyond the bounds of probability, and determined to
endeavour to check its rapid flights, lest they should sometimes extend
into madness.