Dorothée’s spirits being now more composed, she rose, and unlocked the door that led into the late Marchioness’s apartment, and Emily passed into a lofty chamber, hung round with dark arras, and so spacious, that the lamp she held up did not show its extent; while Dorothée, when she entered, had dropped into a chair, where, sighing deeply, she scarcely trusted herself with the view of a scene so affecting to her. It was some time before Emily perceived, through the dusk, the bed on which the Marchioness was said to have died; when, advancing to the upper end of the room, she discovered the high canopied tester of dark green damask, with the curtains descending to the floor in the fashion of a tent, half drawn, and remaining apparently, as they had been left twenty years before; and over the whole bedding was thrown a counterpane, or pall, of black velvet, that hung down to the floor. Emily shuddered, as she held the lamp over it, and looked within the dark curtains, where she almost expected to have seen a human face, and, suddenly remembering the horror she had suffered upon discovering the dying Madame Montoni in the turret-chamber of Udolpho, her spirits fainted, and she was turning from the bed, when Dorothée, who had now reached it, exclaimed, “Holy Virgin! methinks I see my lady stretched upon that pall—as when last I saw her!”
Emily, shocked by this exclamation, looked involuntarily again within the curtains, but the blackness of the pall only appeared; while Dorothée was compelled to support herself upon the side of the bed, and presently tears brought her some relief.
“Ah!” said she, after she had wept awhile, “it was here I sat on that terrible night, and held my lady’s hand, and heard her last words, and saw all her sufferings—here she died in my arms!”
“Do not indulge these painful recollections,” said Emily, “let us go. Show me the picture you mentioned, if it will not too much affect you.”
“It hangs in the oriel,” said Dorothée rising, and going towards a small door near the bed’s head, which she opened, and Emily followed with the light into the closet of the late Marchioness.
“Alas! there she is, ma’amselle,” said Dorothée, pointing to a portrait of a lady, “there is her very self! just as she looked when she came first to the château. You see, madam, she was all blooming like you, then—and so soon to be cut off!”
While Dorothée spoke, Emily was attentively examining the picture, which bore a strong resemblance to the miniature, though the expression of the countenance in each was somewhat different; but still she thought she perceived something of that pensive melancholy in the portrait, which so strongly characterised the miniature.
“Pray, ma’amselle, stand beside the picture, that I may look at you together,” said Dorothée, who, when the request was complied with, exclaimed again at the resemblance. Emily also, as she gazed upon it, thought that she had somewhere seen a person very like it, though she could not now recollect who this was.
In this closet were many memorials of the departed Marchioness; a robe and several articles of her dress were scattered upon the chairs, as if they had just been thrown off. On the floor were a pair of black satin slippers, and, on the dressing-table, a pair of gloves and a long black veil, which, as Emily took it up to examine, she perceived was dropping to pieces with age.
“Ah!” said Dorothée, observing the veil, “my lady’s hand laid it there; it has never been moved since!”