Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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whispers uttering temptations never to be divulged.” He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow. “But I,” said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms around him, — “ but I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this love so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away.” “No, no!” exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. “The worst revelation is to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutely refrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternatural enemy troubled me not, 1—I—have— Oh, Heaven! Mercy —mercy! ‘There it stands, — there, by thy side, — there, there!” And he fell to the ground insensible.

ZANONI, 365

CHAPTER VY.

Doch wunderbar ergriff mich’s diese Nacht ; Die Glieder schienen schon in odes Macht.! UHLAND.

A FEVER, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of consciousness; and when, by Adela’s care more than the skill of the physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably shocked by the change in his sister’s appearance; at first, he fondly imagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with hisown. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the malady was deep-seated, — deep, deep, beyond the reach of Atsculapius and his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully impressed by the strange confessions she had heard, — by the ravings of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, “Tt is there, — there, by thy side, my sister!” He had transferred to her fancy the spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not by her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; by the shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession; bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy there could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought

1 This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already in the power of deatk.

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to retract, — to undo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of an overheated brain! And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often, as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it.

She turned paler if he approached, — she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between his sister and*himself. He could endure no more the presence of the one whose life his life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure, and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly.

The first gleam of joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela’s face, he beheld when he murmured “ Farewell. He travelled for some weeks through the wildest parts of Scotland; scenery, which makes the artist, was loveless to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings of new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.

Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who gazed on the Medusa’s head, and felt, without a struggle, the human being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not idiocy, — it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as the night advanced towards the eleventh hour —the hour in which Glyndon had concluded his tale — she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.

Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look of unspeakable appeal for succor, for protection, and suddenly, as the clock struck, fell