The Mysteries of Udolpho

Dorothee promised to return, on the following night, with the keys of

the chambers, and then wished Emily good repose, and departed. Emily,

however, continued at the window, musing upon the melancholy fate of

the Marchioness and listening, in awful expectation, for a return of the

music. But the stillness of the night remained long unbroken, except by

the murmuring sounds of the woods, as they waved in the breeze, and then

by the distant bell of the convent, striking one. She now withdrew

from the window, and, as she sat at her bed-side, indulging melancholy

reveries, which the loneliness of the hour assisted, the stillness was

suddenly interrupted not by music, but by very uncommon sounds, that

seemed to come either from the room, adjoining her own, or from one

below. The terrible catastrophe, that had been related to her, together

with the mysterious circumstances, said to have since occurred in the

chateau, had so much shocked her spirits, that she now sunk, for a

moment, under the weakness of superstition. The sounds, however, did not

return, and she retired, to forget in sleep the disastrous story she had

heard.