They were nearly up with her. Rose, in her faintness, not having yet dared to look at the sight, clung to the arm of Mr. St. John. He was gazing on her--Adeline; and his face, never very rosy, had turned of a yet paler hue than common.
Oh, the rich and flowing robes in which they had decked her! white satin, covered with costly lace; white ribbons, white flowers, everything about her white; the festive attire of a bride adorning the upright dead, and that dead worn and wasted! A narrow band of white satin was passed tightly under the chin, to keep the jaw from falling, but it was partly hidden by the hair and the wreath of flowers, and the veil that floated behind her. Never, in health, had those beautiful ringlets been seen on Adeline as they were set forth now, to shade those hollow cheeks: but all the richness of her dress and the flowing hair, all the flowers and the costly lace, could not conceal the ghastliness of the features, or soften the fixed stare of the glazed eyes. Yet, in the contour of the face, there was something still inexpressibly beautiful. To a stranger entering the room, unsuspecting the truth, as Mr. St. John, she looked like one fearfully ill, fearfully strange: and how was Mr. St. John, who had never heard of the custom, to divine the truth? Did the idea occur to him that Adeline was standing in the very spot where he had first met her, a year before, when the French marigold in his button-hole was accidentally caught by her? Did the strange gloomy silence strike ominously upon him; putting him in mind of a funeral or a lying-in-state, rather than a gay reception?
He went close up, and halted in front of her: Rose by him, shaking from head to foot. Forgetting, probably, what Rose had said, that she would not speak to him, or else obeying the impulse of the moment, he mechanically held out his hand to Adeline: but there was no answering impulse on her part.
He stood rooted to the spot, his eyes running rapidly over her. They glanced down on the flounces of the rich lace dress, they wandered up to her face--it was the first close, full view he had obtained of it. He saw the set, rigid features, the unmistakable stare of the glassy eye; and, with a rushing sensation of sickening awe and terror, the terrible truth burst upon his brain.
That it was not Adeline de Castella, but her CORPSE which stood there.
He was a strong-minded man--a man little given to betray his feelings, or to suffer them to escape beyond his own control: yet he staggered now against the wall by her side, in what seemed a fainting-fit. Rose, alarmed for the consequences of what she had done, burst into tears, knelt down, and began to rub his hands.
"Open the windows--give some air here," called out little Monsieur Durante, who had come all the way from Ostrohove to see the sight. "Here's a gentleman in an attack."
"Nothing of the sort," returned an Englishman, who made one of the company; "he has nearly fainted, that's all. There's no cause for alarm, young lady. I suppose he came in, not knowing what he was going to see, and the shock overpowered him. It is an odd fashion, this. See: he revives already."
Consciousness came to Mr. St. John. He rose slowly, shook himself out of a shuddering-fit, and with a last wild yearning glance at the dead, fell into the line of the retreaters. But it was Miss Carr who now detained him: Adeline's message had yet to be given.
"The address on the packet was in her handwriting, Mr. St. John," she whispered; "she wrote it yesterday, only a few hours before she died She charged me to say that everything is there, except the ring, which has never been off her finger since you placed it there, and will be buried with her; and to tell you that she had been ever faithful to you; as in life, so unto death."