All were silent except Faustina. She shook and moaned and chattered incessantly. Such a mere animal was this wretched woman that she was quite absorbed in her present sufferings. While enduring this intense cold she could not look forward to the terrors of the future.
"It's insufferable!" she exclaimed, fiercely stamping her feet; "can you not make this beast of a carriage closer, then? My flesh is stone and my blood is ice, I tell you."
One window had been left open a little way, to let a breath of air into the carriage, which, crowded with four persons, was otherwise stifling. But the viscount now raised both his fettered hands and closed up the window. The arrangement did not prove satisfactory. It deprived the sufferers of air without making them any warmer. Faustina shook and moaned and chattered all the same.
"Oh, wretches!" she exclaimed, in furious disgust; "open the window again! I am suffocated! I am poisoned! They have all been eating garlic and drinking whisky!"
The window was opened at her desire, but as they were then crossing the narrow isthmus of rock that connected the castle steep with the land, the wind, from that exposed position, was cutting sharp, and drove into the aperture the stinging snow, which entered the skin like needle points.
"Ah, shut it! shut it! It kills me! It is infamous to treat a poor little lady so!" she cried, bursting into tears.
Again the window was closed; but not for any length of time. Apparently she could neither bear it open nor shut. So, shaking, moaning, and complaining, the poor creature was taken through that long and bitter night journey which ended at last only at the station house of Banff.
Half dead with cold, she was lifted out of the carriage by the two policemen who stood upon the sidewalk, where she remained, shaking, chattering, and weeping tears that froze upon her cheeks as they fell.
She could see nothing in that dark street but the gloomy building before her, dimly lighted by its iron lamp above the doorway.
There she remained till the viscount was handed out.