When her spirits had overcome the first shock of her situation, she
held up the lamp to examine, if the chamber afforded a possibility of an
escape. It was a spacious room, whose walls, wainscoted with rough oak,
shewed no casement but the grated one, which Emily had left, and no
other door than that, by which she had entered. The feeble rays of the
lamp, however, did not allow her to see at once its full extent; she
perceived no furniture, except, indeed, an iron chair, fastened in the
centre of the chamber, immediately over which, depending on a chain from
the ceiling, hung an iron ring. Having gazed upon these, for some time,
with wonder and horror, she next observed iron bars below, made for the
purpose of confining the feet, and on the arms of the chair were rings
of the same metal.
As she continued to survey them, she concluded, that
they were instruments of torture, and it struck her, that some poor
wretch had once been fastened in this chair, and had there been starved
to death. She was chilled by the thought; but, what was her agony, when,
in the next moment, it occurred to her, that her aunt might have been
one of these victims, and that she herself might be the next! An acute
pain seized her head, she was scarcely able to hold the lamp, and,
looking round for support, was seating herself, unconsciously, in the
iron chair itself; but suddenly perceiving where she was, she started
from it in horror, and sprung towards a remote end of the room. Here
again she looked round for a seat to sustain her, and perceived only a
dark curtain, which, descending from the ceiling to the floor, was drawn
along the whole side of the chamber. Ill as she was, the appearance of
this curtain struck her, and she paused to gaze upon it, in wonder and
apprehension.
It seemed to conceal a recess of the chamber; she wished, yet dreaded,
to lift it, and to discover what it veiled: twice she was withheld by
a recollection of the terrible spectacle her daring hand had formerly
unveiled in an apartment of the castle, till, suddenly conjecturing,
that it concealed the body of her murdered aunt, she seized it, in a fit
of desperation, and drew it aside. Beyond, appeared a corpse, stretched
on a kind of low couch, which was crimsoned with human blood, as was
the floor beneath. The features, deformed by death, were ghastly and
horrible, and more than one livid wound appeared in the face. Emily,
bending over the body, gazed, for a moment, with an eager, frenzied eye;
but, in the next, the lamp dropped from her hand, and she fell senseless
at the foot of the couch.