Dorothee promised to return, on the following night, with the keys of
the chambers, and then wished Emily good repose, and departed. Emily,
however, continued at the window, musing upon the melancholy fate of
the Marchioness and listening, in awful expectation, for a return of the
music. But the stillness of the night remained long unbroken, except by
the murmuring sounds of the woods, as they waved in the breeze, and then
by the distant bell of the convent, striking one. She now withdrew
from the window, and, as she sat at her bed-side, indulging melancholy
reveries, which the loneliness of the hour assisted, the stillness was
suddenly interrupted not by music, but by very uncommon sounds, that
seemed to come either from the room, adjoining her own, or from one
below. The terrible catastrophe, that had been related to her, together
with the mysterious circumstances, said to have since occurred in the
chateau, had so much shocked her spirits, that she now sunk, for a
moment, under the weakness of superstition. The sounds, however, did not
return, and she retired, to forget in sleep the disastrous story she had
heard.