“To what does your Grace refer?” answered the Count.
“Why, Count, but three short days ago, upon this very couch lay your gallant brother; here he folded to his arms his Adrian. Now that very son is a—murderer—a parricide. I rest upon the very couch that supported the murdered remains of the late Count, and thou, Aldarin, his brother—”
“His murderer!” exclaimed a voice that thrilled to the very heart of Aldarin, and made the Duke start with terror.
And as he started the knife came hissing through the air, it grazed the robe of the Duke, it sank to the very hilt in the death couch.
The start of the Duke saved him from the steel.
“Eh! Count, what’s that? Who spoke? eh?” The eyes of the Count distended, and his lips parted with affright as he spoke.
The Count looked up and beheld a sight that froze his very blood.
On the opposite side of the bed, among the crimson hangings, stood a figure robed in white, and there, two eyes, blazing like fire-coals, from beneath the deathly pallor of a half-veiled brow, looked steadily upon the trembling Aldarin.
The cheeks of that pale countenance were dug into fearful hollows, and the eyes were surrounded by circles of livid blue.
The Count gazed with intense horror at this apparition and the Sable Figure, who had hurriedly stooped, in the effort to wrench the dagger from the couch, with a noiseless grasp, looked up and started hastily backward as his eye rested upon the ghastly face, appearing amid the hangings in the opposite side of the bed.