“Oh! I am glad to be pretty, for the sake of the little Thibaut, that saved me from barbarous men, and from myself, and, alas! from my uncle! Little Thibaut, did I hurt when I beat thee? Beat me, then, till I cry with the pain.”
She sobbed and laughed and held my face against her bosom. In the midst, the candle on the wall dropped like a meteor, and instantly we were immured in a very crypt of darkness.
She cried in a terrified voice: “Oh, mon Dieu! hold me, or I sink!” and committed herself shuddering to my embrace.
The blackness was blind, horrible, beyond reason. We could only shut our eyes and whisper to one another, expecting and hoping for Gusman’s return. But he came no more that night, and by-and-by Carinne slept in my arms.
* * * * * * *
The glare of torch-light on my face brought me to my senses. That sombre deadman, as Carinne called him, stood above us—visionless, without movement, it seemed—a lurid genii presented in a swirling drift of smoke. He might never have moved from the spot since we had last seen him there.
“Why dost thou wake us, good friend?” said I. “Hast thou a midnight service for the dead here?”
“It is high morning,” said he, in a voice like a funeral bell.
“Morning!”
I sat up in amazement. Truly I had not thought of it. We had slept the clock round; but there was no day in this hideous and melancholy underworld.