Extremely disappointed, she begged to speak with Mrs. Marl; who sent her word she was much engaged, but would wait upon her as soon as she was able.
Vainly, however, she expected her; it grew dusk; she felt herself worse every moment; flushed with fever, or shivering with cold, and her head nearly split asunder with agony. She determined to go once more down stairs, and offer to her host himself any reward he could claim, so he would undertake the immediate delivery of the letter.
With difficulty she arose; with slow steps, and tottering, she descended; but as she approached her little parlour, she heard voices in it, and stopt. They spoke low, and she could not distinguish them. The door of an adjoining room was open, and by its stillness empty; she resolved to ring there, to demand to speak with Mr. Marl. But as she dragged her weak limbs into the apartment, she saw, stretched out upon a large table, the same form, dress, and figure she had seen upon the bier.
Starting, almost fainting, but too much awed to call out, she held trembling by the door.
The bodily feebleness which impeded her immediate retreat, gave force to a little mental reflexion: Do I shrink thus, thought she, from what so earnestly I have prayed to become ... and so soon I must represent ... a picture of death?
She now impelled herself towards the table. A cloth covered the face; she stood still, hesitating if she had power to remove it: but she thought it a call to her own self-examination; and though mentally recoiling, advanced. When close to the table, she stood still, violently trembling. Yet she would not allow herself to retreat. She now put forth her hand; but it shook suspended over the linen, without courage to draw it aside. At length, however, with enthusiastic self-compulsion, slightly and fearfully, she lifted it up ... but instantly, and with instinctive horrour, snatched her hand away, and placed it before her shut eyes.
She felt, now, she had tried herself beyond her courage, and, deeply moved, was fain to retreat; but in letting down her hand, to see her way, she found she had already removed the linen from a part of the face, and the view she unintentionally caught almost petrified her.
For some instants she stood motionless, from want of strength to stir, but with closed eyes, that feared to confirm their first surmise; but when, turning from the ghastly visage, she attempted, without another glance, to glide away, an unavoidable view of the coat, which suddenly she recognized, put her conjecture beyond all doubt, that she now saw dead before her the husband of her sister.
Resentment, in gentle minds, however merited and provoked, survives not the breath of the offender. With the certainty no further evil can be practised, perishes vengeance against the culprit, though not hatred of the guilt: and though, with the first movement of sisterly feelings, she would have said, Is Eugenia then released? the awe was too great, his own change was too solemn. He was now where no human eye could follow, no human judgment overtake him.
Again she endeavoured to escape the dreadful scene, but her shaking limbs were refractory, and would not support her. The mortal being requires use to be reconciled to its own visible mortality; dismal is its view; grim, repulsive, terrific its aspect.