Yes, she slept. The Indian sleeps at the stake in the intervals between

his tortures; and mental torments, in like manner, exhaust by long

continuance the sensibility of the sufferer, so that an interval of

lethargic repose must necessarily ensue, ere the pangs which they

inflict can again be renewed.

The Countess slept, then, for several hours, and dreamed that she was

in the ancient house at Cumnor Place, listening for the low whistle with

which Leicester often used to announce his presence in the courtyard

when arriving suddenly on one of his stolen visits. But on this

occasion, instead of a whistle, she heard the peculiar blast of a

bugle-horn, such as her father used to wind on the fall of the stag, and

which huntsmen then called a MORT. She ran, as she thought, to a

window that looked into the courtyard, which she saw filled with men

in mourning garments. The old Curate seemed about to read the funeral

service. Mumblazen, tricked out in an antique dress, like an ancient

herald, held aloft a scutcheon, with its usual decorations of skulls,

cross-bones, and hour-glasses, surrounding a coat-of-arms, of which she

could only distinguish that it was surmounted with an Earl's coronet.

The old man looked at her with a ghastly smile, and said, "Amy, are they

not rightly quartered?" Just as he spoke, the horns again poured on her

ear the melancholy yet wild strain of the MORT, or death-note, and she

awoke.

The Countess awoke to hear a real bugle-note, or rather the combined

breath of many bugles, sounding not the MORT. but the jolly REVEILLE, to

remind the inmates of the Castle of Kenilworth that the pleasures of the

day were to commence with a magnificent stag-hunting in the neighbouring

Chase. Amy started up from her couch, listened to the sound, saw the

first beams of the summer morning already twinkle through the lattice

of her window, and recollected, with feelings of giddy agony, where she

was, and how circumstanced.

"He thinks not of me," she said; "he will not come nigh me! A Queen is

his guest, and what cares he in what corner of his huge Castle a wretch

like me pines in doubt, which is fast fading into despair?" At once a

sound at the door, as of some one attempting to open it softly, filled

her with an ineffable mixture of joy and fear; and hastening to remove

the obstacle she had placed against the door, and to unlock it, she had

the precaution to ask! "Is it thou, my love?"

"Yes, my Countess," murmured a whisper in reply.




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