The Mysteries of Udolpho

He turned to his wife, who had now recovered her spirits, and who

vehemently and wildly remonstrated upon this mysterious suspicion: but

Montoni's rage heightened with her indignation, and Emily, dreading

the event of it, threw herself between them, and clasped his knees in

silence, looking up in his face with an expression, that might have

softened the heart of a fiend. Whether his was hardened by a conviction

of Madame Montoni's guilt, or that a bare suspicion of it made him

eager to exercise vengeance, he was totally and alike insensible to the

distress of his wife, and to the pleading looks of Emily, whom he made

no attempt to raise, but was vehemently menacing both, when he was

called out of the room by some person at the door. As he shut the door,

Emily heard him turn the lock and take out the key; so that Madame

Montoni and herself were now prisoners; and she saw that his designs

became more and more terrible.

Her endeavours to explain his motives

for this circumstance were almost as ineffectual as those to sooth the

distress of her aunt, whose innocence she could not doubt; but she, at

length, accounted for Montoni's readiness to suspect his wife by his own

consciousness of cruelty towards her, and for the sudden violence of

his present conduct against both, before even his suspicions could be

completely formed, by his general eagerness to effect suddenly whatever

he was led to desire and his carelessness of justice, or humanity, in

accomplishing it.

Madame Montoni, after some time, again looked round, in search of a

possibility of escape from the castle, and conversed with Emily on the

subject, who was now willing to encounter any hazard, though she forbore

to encourage a hope in her aunt, which she herself did not admit. How

strongly the edifice was secured, and how vigilantly guarded, she knew

too well; and trembled to commit their safety to the caprice of

the servant, whose assistance they must solicit. Old Carlo was

compassionate, but he seemed to be too much in his master's interest to

be trusted by them; Annette could of herself do little, and Emily knew

Ludovico only from her report. At present, however, these considerations

were useless, Madame Montoni and her niece being shut up from all

intercourse, even with the persons, whom there might be these reasons to

reject. In the hall, confusion and tumult still reigned. Emily, as she listened

anxiously to the murmur, that sounded along the gallery, sometimes

fancied she heard the clashing of swords, and, when she considered the

nature of the provocation, given by Montoni, and his impetuosity, it

appeared probable, that nothing less than arms would terminate the

contention. Madame Montoni, having exhausted all her expressions of

indignation, and Emily, hers of comfort, they remained silent, in that

kind of breathless stillness, which, in nature, often succeeds to the

uproar of conflicting elements; a stillness, like the morning, that

dawns upon the ruins of an earthquake.