d held her suppliant hands was La
Mercia; and he who, now divested of his mantle, stood over her, was the
dark and awful-looking man of the picture! There they stood. The dresses
of both were copied to the life; their looks--oh, Heaven! their very
looks were pictured as they stood. She spoke: and as she did so, her
arms fell powerless before her; he scowled the same horrid scowl of hate
and scorn. My brain was turning; I tried to scream out, my voice failed
me--I was mute and powerless; my knees rocked and smote each other;
convulsive tremor shook me to the centre, and with a groan of agony I
sank fainting to the earth.

The day was breaking ere I came to myself; I arose, all was quiet around
me. I walked to the boat--the boatmen were sleeping; I awoke them, and
we returned to Dresden. I threw myself upon my bed--my brain seemed
stupified and exhausted--I fell into a profound sleep, and woke not
till late the following evening. A messenger had brought a note from the
Count--"The Countess is worse." The note detailed briefly that she had
passed a feverish and disturbed night, and that the medical attendants
had never left the villa. Was it then but a dream, my dreadful vision of
the past night? and had my mind, sorrowing for the affliction of my best
friend, conjured up the awful scenes I believed to have witnessed? How
could it be otherwise? The _billet_ I received told most distinctly that
she was confined to her bed, severely, dangerously ill; and of course
watched with all the care and attention the most sedulous anxiety
could confer. I opened the picture, and then conviction flashed with
lightning's rapidity upon me, that it was not delusion--that no dream
had brought these images before my mind. "Ah," I cried, "my friend, my
patron, how have I betrayed thee? Why did I not earlier communicate
the dreadful story of the picture, and thus guard you against the
machinations by which the fiend himself has surrounded you? But then,
what had I to tell? how embody the vague and shadowy doubts that took,
even in my own mind, no palpable shape or form?"

That entire day was passed in alternate resolution and abandonment;
now, determined to hasten to the villa, and disclose to the Count
every circumstance I had seen, and then thinking how little such mere
suspicion would gain credence, and how unfit the present moment to
obtrude upon his breaking and distracted heart the horrid dread that
haunted mine. Towards evening a messe