The Mysteries of Udolpho

'No, ma'amselle, I called at the door as I passed, but it was fastened;

so I thought my lady was gone to bed.' 'Who, then, was with your lady just now?' said Emily, forgetting, in

surprise, her usual prudence.

'Nobody, I believe, ma'am,' replied Annette, 'nobody has been with her,

I believe, since I left you.' Emily took no further notice of the subject, and, after some struggle

with imaginary fears, her good nature prevailed over them so far, that

she dismissed Annette for the night. She then sat, musing upon her own

circumstances and those of Madame Montoni, till her eye rested on the

miniature picture, which she had found, after her father's death, among

the papers he had enjoined her to destroy. It was open upon the table,

before her, among some loose drawings, having, with them, been taken out

of a little box by Emily, some hours before. The sight of it called

up many interesting reflections, but the melancholy sweetness of the

countenance soothed the emotions, which these had occasioned. It was

the same style of countenance as that of her late father, and, while

she gazed on it with fondness on this account, she even fancied

a resemblance in the features. But this tranquillity was suddenly

interrupted, when she recollected the words in the manuscript, that had

been found with this picture, and which had formerly occasioned her

so much doubt and horror.

At length, she roused herself from the deep

reverie, into which this remembrance had thrown her; but, when she rose

to undress, the silence and solitude, to which she was left, at this

midnight hour, for not even a distant sound was now heard, conspired

with the impression the subject she had been considering had given to

her mind, to appall her. Annette's hints, too, concerning this chamber,

simple as they were, had not failed to affect her, since they followed

a circumstance of peculiar horror, which she herself had witnessed, and

since the scene of this was a chamber nearly adjoining her own.

The door of the stair-case was, perhaps, a subject of more reasonable

alarm, and she now began to apprehend, such was the aptitude of her

fears, that this stair-case had some private communication with the

apartment, which she shuddered even to remember. Determined not to

undress, she lay down to sleep in her clothes, with her late father's

dog, the faithful MANCHON, at the foot of the bed, whom she considered

as a kind of guard. Thus circumstanced, she tried to banish reflection, but her busy fancy

would still hover over the subjects of her interest, and she heard the

clock of the castle strike two, before she closed her eyes.