'No, ma'amselle, I called at the door as I passed, but it was fastened;
so I thought my lady was gone to bed.' 'Who, then, was with your lady just now?' said Emily, forgetting, in
surprise, her usual prudence.
'Nobody, I believe, ma'am,' replied Annette, 'nobody has been with her,
I believe, since I left you.' Emily took no further notice of the subject, and, after some struggle
with imaginary fears, her good nature prevailed over them so far, that
she dismissed Annette for the night. She then sat, musing upon her own
circumstances and those of Madame Montoni, till her eye rested on the
miniature picture, which she had found, after her father's death, among
the papers he had enjoined her to destroy. It was open upon the table,
before her, among some loose drawings, having, with them, been taken out
of a little box by Emily, some hours before. The sight of it called
up many interesting reflections, but the melancholy sweetness of the
countenance soothed the emotions, which these had occasioned. It was
the same style of countenance as that of her late father, and, while
she gazed on it with fondness on this account, she even fancied
a resemblance in the features. But this tranquillity was suddenly
interrupted, when she recollected the words in the manuscript, that had
been found with this picture, and which had formerly occasioned her
so much doubt and horror.
At length, she roused herself from the deep
reverie, into which this remembrance had thrown her; but, when she rose
to undress, the silence and solitude, to which she was left, at this
midnight hour, for not even a distant sound was now heard, conspired
with the impression the subject she had been considering had given to
her mind, to appall her. Annette's hints, too, concerning this chamber,
simple as they were, had not failed to affect her, since they followed
a circumstance of peculiar horror, which she herself had witnessed, and
since the scene of this was a chamber nearly adjoining her own.
The door of the stair-case was, perhaps, a subject of more reasonable
alarm, and she now began to apprehend, such was the aptitude of her
fears, that this stair-case had some private communication with the
apartment, which she shuddered even to remember. Determined not to
undress, she lay down to sleep in her clothes, with her late father's
dog, the faithful MANCHON, at the foot of the bed, whom she considered
as a kind of guard. Thus circumstanced, she tried to banish reflection, but her busy fancy
would still hover over the subjects of her interest, and she heard the
clock of the castle strike two, before she closed her eyes.