I saw the glitter of gleaming steel, as a dagger flashed in the moonlight. I heard a stifled, gurgling cry, and before I could echo it, I felt myself gripped by the throat and rendered for the moment incapable of uttering a sound. It seemed to me that my last moment had come. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth; my breath seemed to be forsaking me; my eyes felt as if they were starting from their sockets, and the horrible dread of immediate violent death possessed me.
Presently—the time may have been a few seconds; to me it seemed an age—the pressure was taken from my throat, and even as my senses were leaving me I felt a gag put in my mouth; some heavy garment was thrown over me; I was lifted from the ground, and was borne away, possibly to endure a fate which I was no longer even capable of imagining.
CHAPTER XII.
“In mortal peril.”
When I once more became conscious of my surroundings, I was seated in a chair, in the center of a large, low-ceiled apartment, of which the atmosphere was chill and damp and the light feeble. I was supported on either side by a figure clad in a long gray cloak and wearing a gray hood and scarlet domino. As my scared senses reasserted themselves more fully, I could see that the room was peopled by many other figures similarly attired, and that my presence among them was the central subject of interest.
Nay, there was one other object that must have been of even more horrible interest than I was! In front of the chair upon which I was seated there lay a recumbent figure, covered by a large square of black cloth. It was outlined with horrible distinctness, and a shudder ran through me as I realized that this was the dead body of the man I had seen struck down while in the act of shadowing my husband for some purpose unknown to me, though I could not have imagined that purpose anything but inimical to his safety.
And where was he, the beloved object for whose sake I had braved the dangers which now encompassed me? I looked around me, hoping to recognize his figure among the many with which I was surrounded. But alas! the enshrouding cloaks and obscuring dominos would not permit recognition, and my heart sank within me as I thought that even were he here he might find it impossible to be of service to me without endangering his own life.
At the end of the chamber in which I now found myself was a slightly raised platform upon which were seated seven or eight of the cloaked figures. But I noticed that in their case the cloak was black and the domino yellow, and I conjectured rightly that they were the rulers of the assembly. I was feeling acute bodily suffering, yet that was for the time lost sight of in the horror of possible speedy annihilation.
Have any of my readers ever been in a situation of mortal terror? If so, they will be able to realize the acuteness of perception with which I regarded everything around me, and the miraculous swiftness with which the most irrelevant ideas chased each other through my brain. Even while trying to pierce the disguise of my possible judges, I found myself wondering how dear little Jerry was getting on, and whether Belle’s wedding would be postponed again or not.
But, after what seemed an interminable time, the silence was at last broken by a voice which ordered, in deep, impressive tones, “Remove that covering.”