When Miss Levison recovered her consciousness it was broad daylight. The rising sun glancing over the top of the Eastern mountain sent arrows of golden light in through the window at which she sat.
Music filled the morning air!
Salome passed her hands over her eyes, and gazed around. So long and deep had been her swoon that, for the time, she had utterly lost her memory, and now found difficulty in trying to recover it. Bewildered, she looked about, and listened to the strange, wild music sounding under her window—a sort of morning serenade or reveille, it seemed.
Next her eyes fell upon her magnificent bridal array, displayed on stands near the elegant dressing-table.
Then she remembered that this was her wedding-day, and a flush of joy lighted up her face.
But it passed in a moment.
What was this that lay so heavy at her heart! Was it the remnant of an evil dream?
What had happened? Something must have happened! Else why should she find herself seated in that easy-chair at the open window, and see that her bed had not been occupied?
Then, slowly, she recollected the events of the previous night—her retirement to her chamber; her talk there with the housekeeper about Rose Cameron, the "handsome hizzie," who had been haunting the premises and giving trouble all that day; the message from her father; her affecting interview with him in his bedroom; her return to her own apartment through the dimly-lighted, deserted hall, where she met the pale and spectral form of Lord Arondelle, who vanished as she called to him! her terrified flight into her own chamber!
All these incidents she clearly remembered.