through which
she had passed had weakened her, and the last scene with Obed had not
been adapted to reassure her or console her. The state of suspense in
which she now was did not give her any fresh strength. Her nervous
system was disorganized, and her present position stimulated her
morbid fancy, turning it toward dark and sombre forebodings. And now
in this solitude and gloom which was about her, and in the deep
suspense in which she was waiting, there came to her mind a
thought--a thought which made her flesh creep, and her blood run
chill, while a strange, grisly horror descended awfully upon her. She
could not help remembering how it had been before. Twice she had made
an effort to anticipate fate and grasp at vengeance--once by herself
alone, and once in the person of Gualtier. Each attempt had been
baffled. It had been frustrated in the same way precisely. To each of
them there had come that fearful phantom figure, rising before them
awfully, menacingly, with an aspect of terrible import. Well she
remembered that shape as it had risen before her at the pavilion--a
shape with white face, and white clothing, and burning eyes--that
figure which seemed to emerge from the depths of the sea, with the
drip of the water in her dark, dank hair, and in her white, clinging
draperies. It was no fiction of the imagination, for Gualtier had
seen the same. It was no fiction, for she recalled her horror, and
the flight through the forest, while the shape pursued till it struck
her down into senselessness.

A shudder passed through her once more at the recollection of these
things. And there arose a question of awful import. Would it come
again? Now was the third attempt--the fateful third! Would she again
be baffled, and by _that_? She feared no human foe; but this horror
was something which she could never again encounter and live. And
there came the terror over her that she might once again see this.

She was alone amidst her terrors. It was growing late. In the great
room the dimness was deepening, and the furniture looked ghostly at
the farther end of the apartment. It was not long since Obed had
gone, but the time seemed to her interminable. It seemed to her as
though she were all alone in the great house. She struggled with her
fancies, and sat looking at the door fixedly, and with a certain
awful expectation in her eyes.

Then, as she looked, a thrill flashed through all her being. For
there, slowly and noiselessly,