“I understand you,” returned the Hebrew maiden; “and it shall be as you desire.”
She then took her departure.
CHAPTER CXIV.
OLD DEATH IN THE DUNGEON.
It was five o’clock in the evening of the following day; and Old Death was crouched up, like a wild beast, upon his bed in the dungeon, which was now lighted by the lamp that Esther de Medina had given him.
His natural emaciation had so frightfully increased, that he seemed but a skeleton in the clothes which hung upon him as if they had never been made for one so thin as he. The skirts of his old grey coat were wrapped around his wasted shanks—for, though it was now the month of May, yet it was cold in that dungeon. His countenance was wan and ghastly;—but its expression was little calculated to excite pity—for any thing more diabolically ferocious than the old miscreant’s aspect, cannot be well conceived. His face was the horrible reflex of a mind filled with passions and longings of so savage and inhuman a nature, that the mere thought makes one shudder.
“She will come presently,” he muttered to himself, with a kind of subdued growling which indicated the fury of his pent-up rage: “she will come presently,” he repeated, his eyes glaring like those of a hyena beneath his shaggy, over-hanging brows; “and perhaps it will be for to-day! Who knows? she may think me penitent enough to be no longer dangerous: and then—then——”
He paused, and ground his jaws savagely together as if they were filled with teeth; and his hands were clenched with such spasmodic violence that the long nails ran into the palms.
“For two months and a half,” he continued at length, and still musing to himself, “has the fiend—the infernal wretch—my mortal enemy, kept me here! For two months and a half have I been his prisoner! Perdition seize upon him! That man was sent into the world to be my ruin—to thwart me—to persecute me! From the first moment I ever met him six or seven months ago, all has gone wrong with me. But the day of vengeance must and shall come,—yes—vengeance—vengeance—though it costs me my life. Ah! he fancies that I am ignorant of his secret: and yet I understand it all now—yes—all, all! Rapid as was the gleam of the lamp which showed me his features the first time he ever visited me here, so quick did a light flash to my mind—so quick did the truth break upon me! Yes—yes—I understand it all now;”—and he chuckled in a scarcely audible manner, yet the more horribly menacing because it was so subdued and low. “But how can it be?—how could he have been saved?” he asked himself, in his sombre musings: then, after a brief pause, during which he rocked to and fro on the bed, he continued, “Never mind the how! That such is the fact I am confident—and that is enough for me! Yes—yes—that is enough for me! Fool that I was ever for a moment to suspect him to be Lord Ellingham! And yet I should have clung to this belief, had not the lamp glared upon his face as he darted out of the cell! Ah! ah! he little thinks that I know him now—that I have known him ever since the moment when the light showed me his features, blackened as they were! Ah! ah!” again chuckled Old Death: “I fancy that I have lulled them into an idea of my penitence! They imagine that the work of reformation has begun with me! Ah! ha! I played my cards well there! I did not whine and weep too soon—I appeared to be precious tough, and precious obstinate; and my slow conversion seemed all the more natural. They will fall all the easier into the snare: they——”
At this moment a slight noise at the door of the cell made the ancient miscreant start; and he instantaneously composed his features into as mournful and sanctimonious an expression as such a horribly hang-dog countenance could possibly assume.
The trap-door opened; and a sweet, musical voice said, “I am here again, according to my promise: you see that I do not desert you.”