Pagina 411 di 483

When I recovered I found myself surrounded by the people of the

inn; their countenances expressed a breathless terror, but the

horror of others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the

feelings that oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where

lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so

dear, so worthy. She had been moved from the posture in which I

had first beheld her, and now, as she lay, her head upon her arm

and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have

supposed her asleep. I rushed towards her and embraced her with

ardour, but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me

that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth

whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the fiend's

grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from

her lips.