The Mysteries of Udolpho

I will advise you where to plant yourselves;

Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time,

The moment on 't; for 't must be done to-night.

MACBETH

Emily was somewhat surprised, on the following day, to find that Annette

had heard of Madame Montoni's confinement in the chamber over the

portal, as well as of her purposed visit there, on the approaching

night.

That the circumstance, which Barnardine had so solemnly enjoined

her to conceal, he had himself told to so indiscreet an hearer as

Annette, appeared very improbable, though he had now charged her with

a message, concerning the intended interview. He requested, that Emily

would meet him, unattended, on the terrace, at a little after midnight,

when he himself would lead her to the place he had promised; a proposal,

from which she immediately shrunk, for a thousand vague fears darted

athwart her mind, such as had tormented her on the preceding night,

and which she neither knew how to trust, or to dismiss. It frequently

occurred to her, that Barnardine might have deceived her, concerning

Madame Montoni, whose murderer, perhaps, he really was; and that he had

deceived her by order of Montoni, the more easily to draw her into some

of the desperate designs of the latter.

The terrible suspicion, that

Madame Montoni no longer lived, thus came, accompanied by one not less

dreadful for herself.

Unless the crime, by which the aunt had suffered,

was instigated merely by resentment, unconnected with profit, a motive,

upon which Montoni did not appear very likely to act, its object must be

unattained, till the niece was also dead, to whom Montoni knew that

his wife's estates must descend. Emily remembered the words, which had

informed her, that the contested estates in France would devolve to her,

if Madame Montoni died, without consigning them to her husband, and the

former obstinate perseverance of her aunt made it too probable, that

she had, to the last, withheld them. At this instant, recollecting

Barnardine's manner, on the preceding night, she now believed, what she

had then fancied, that it expressed malignant triumph. She shuddered at

the recollection, which confirmed her fears, and determined not to

meet him on the terrace.

Soon after, she was inclined to consider these

suspicions as the extravagant exaggerations of a timid and harassed

mind, and could not believe Montoni liable to such preposterous

depravity as that of destroying, from one motive, his wife and her

niece. She blamed herself for suffering her romantic imagination to

carry her so far beyond the bounds of probability, and determined to

endeavour to check its rapid flights, lest they should sometimes extend

into madness.