Why it had seemed a mere, empty phrase until now. Now it was an appalling reality brimful of horror, even for the coarsest, dullest, and hardest criminal; but of how much more for him.
Lord Vincent in the prison garb, working in chains; inquired after by curious sight-seers; and pointed out to strangers as the felon- viscount.
She meditated on the effect all this would have on him, in the unspeakable misery it would inflict upon his vain, insolent, self- indulgent organization; and she marveled how he would ever endure it.
And she thought of the dishonor this would reflect upon herself as his wife. And she shrunk shudderingly away from the burning shame of living on, the wife of a felon.
In the deep compassion she could not but feel for him, and in the intense mortification she anticipated for herself, she earnestly wished that in some manner he might escape the degrading penalty of his crimes.
In these harassing thoughts and distressing feelings Claudia lay tossing upon her restless bed until long after midnight, when at length she dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Now the circumstance that I am about to relate will be interpreted in a different manner by different people. Rationalists who pin their faith on Sir Walter Scott and his "Demonology" will say it was only an optical illusion; the incredulous, who believe in nothing, will declare it was but a dream; while Spiritualists, who follow Mr. Robert Dale Owen in his "Footprints on the Boundaries of Another World," will be ready to declare that it was the apparition of a spirit; I commit myself to no opinion on the subject.
But when Claudia had slept soundly for three hours she was aroused by hearing her name called; she awoke with a violent start; she sat upright in bed, and stared right before her with fixed eyes, pallid face, and immovable form, as though she were suddenly petrified.
For there at the foot of the bed, between the tall posts, in the division formed by the festoons of the curtains, stood the figure of the Viscount Vincent. His face was pale, still, stern, like that of a dead man; one livid hand clutched his breast, the other was stretched towards her; and from the cold, blue, motionless lips proceeded a voice hollow as the distant moan of the wintry wind through leafless woods:
"Claudia, the debt is paid!"