The Mysteries of Udolpho

Emily, attended by Annette, continued at the casement, for some time,

but all remained still; they heard neither lute or voice again, and

Emily was now as much oppressed by anxious joy, as she lately was by a

sense of her misfortunes. With hasty steps she paced the room, now half

calling on Valancourt's name, then suddenly stopping, and now going to

the casement and listening, where, however, she heard nothing but

the solemn waving of the woods. Sometimes her impatience to speak to

Ludovico prompted her to send Annette to call him; but a sense of the

impropriety of this at midnight restrained her. Annette, meanwhile, as

impatient as her mistress, went as often to the casement to listen, and

returned almost as much disappointed. She, at length, mentioned

Signor Verezzi, and her fear, lest he should enter the chamber by the

staircase, door. 'But the night is now almost past, Mademoiselle,' said

she, recollecting herself; 'there is the morning light, beginning to

peep over those mountains yonder in the east.'

Emily had forgotten, till this moment, that such a person existed as

Verezzi, and all the danger that had appeared to threaten her; but the

mention of his name renewed her alarm, and she remembered the old chest,

that she had wished to place against the door, which she now, with

Annette, attempted to move, but it was so heavy, that they could not

lift it from the floor. 'What is in this great old chest, Mademoiselle,'

said Annette, 'that makes it so weighty?' Emily having replied, 'that

she found it in the chamber, when she first came to the castle, and had

never examined it.'--

'Then I will, ma'amselle,' said Annette, and she

tried to lift the lid; but this was held by a lock, for which she had

no key, and which, indeed, appeared, from its peculiar construction, to

open with a spring. The morning now glimmered through the casements, and

the wind had sunk into a calm. Emily looked out upon the dusky woods,

and on the twilight mountains, just stealing in the eye, and saw the

whole scene, after the storm, lying in profound stillness, the woods

motionless, and the clouds above, through which the dawn trembled,

scarcely appearing to move along the heavens. One soldier was pacing the

terrace beneath, with measured steps; and two, more distant, were sunk

asleep on the walls, wearied with the night's watch. Having inhaled, for

a while, the pure spirit of the air, and of vegetation, which the late

rains had called forth; and having listened, once more, for a note of

music, she now closed the casement, and retired to rest.