At first the feeble light from their lamps fails to penetrate the darkness of the gloomy apartment. At the cursory glance, such as they at first cast round the room, it appears to be empty. Their hearts sink within them. Have they indeed hoped in vain!
Dora is crying bitterly; Ethel, with her eyes fixed upon Ringwood, is reading her own disappointment in his face, when suddenly a piercing cry from Florence wakes the echoes round them.
She has darted forward, and is kneeling over something that even now is only barely discernible to the others as they come nearer to it. It looks like a bundle of clothes, but, as they stoop over it, they, too, can see that it is in reality a human body, and apparently rigid in death.
But the shriek that has sprung from the very soul of Florence has reached some still living fibers in the brain of this forlorn creature. Slowly and with difficulty he raises his head, and opens a pair of fast-glazing eyes. Mechanically his glance falls upon Florence. His lips move; a melancholy smile struggles to show itself upon his parched and blackened lips.
"Florence," he rather sighs than says, and falls back, to all appearance, dead.
"He is not dead!" cries Florence passionately. "He can not be! Oh, save him, save him! Adrian, look up--speak to me! Oh, Adrian, make some sign that you can hear me!"
But he makes no sign. His very breath seems to have left him. Gathering him tenderly in her arms, Florence presses his worn and wasted face against her bosom, and pushes back the hair from his forehead. He is so completely altered, so thorough a wreck has he become, that it is indeed only the eyes of love that could recognize him. His cheeks have fallen in, and deep hollows show themselves. His beard has grown, and is now rough and stubbly; his hair is uncombed, the lines of want, despair, and cruel starvation have blotted out all the old fairness of his features. His clothes are hanging loosely about him; his hands, limp and nerveless, are lying by his side. Who shall tell what agony he suffered during these past lonely days with death--an awful, creeping, gnawing death staring him in the face?
A deadly silence has fallen upon the little group now gazing solemnly down upon his quiet form. Florence, holding him closely to her heart, is gently rocking him to and fro, as though she will not be dissuaded that he still lives.
At length Captain Ringwood, stooping pitifully over her, loosens her hold so far as to enable him to lay his hand upon Adrian's heart. After a moment, during which they all watch him closely, he starts, and, looking still closer into the face that a second ago he believed dead, he says, with subdued but deep excitement-"There may yet be time! He breathes--his heart beats! Who will help me to carry him out of this dungeon?"