'In that room sure enough. It is the Dead Chamber,' said the Count, approaching the door.
'She fled there for concealment on hearing your approach.'
'Man,' said the old Count, pausing, 'are you not mad to tell me that she is there now, and yet was here but a minute ago?'
'As I have Heaven to answer to—she was!'
'Follow me, then.'
On entering the room, Charlie Pierrepont reeled, and would have fallen had not Heinrich supported him.
We scarcely know how to write of the episode that follows, and can but tell the tale as it was told by those who were cognisant of it.
In a purple velvet coffin, mounted with silver, and supported on trestles, the lid being open, lay Ernestine, dressed as we have described her—dead, stone-dead, cold and pale as marble, her lips a pale blue streak, her long eyelashes closed for ever.
Dead, beyond a doubt, was the girl he had clasped in his arms as a living being, but a few minutes before living and full of volition and life, love and energy; the lips he had kissed closed thus for ever; the hands he had caressed, snow-white now, disposed upon her bosom, the upper one holding the cross he had given her!
'Dead! What miracle of heaven; what magic of hell is here!' he exclaimed, as he staggered to the side of the coffin, pale as the girl who lay in it, the bead-like drops oozing from his temples as he grasped the locks above them. 'Speak! oh, speak, Heinrich!'