"Avaunt, demon!" cried Lord Edmund, and, bursting from the room, he rushed out of the house.
What farther passed between the priest and his awful visitor, was known only to themselves; for when the family descended to breakfast, the Mummy was gone, and Father Morris appeared absorbed in his usual studies, without taking the slightest notice of the terrific occurrences of the night.
The death of the Queen being now generally known, her remains, laid in state, were exposed to the lamentations of her subjects, and the family of Mrs. Montagu were amongst the earliest visitors to the mournful spectacle.
In an immense hall, hung with black, was placed a kind of bier, covered with black cloth, supporting the body of the deceased Queen, over which was thrown a velvet pall, so disposed, however, as to display the beautiful features of the deceased, which, though now fixed in death, still retained their native expression of majestic dignity.
Immense tapers of an enormous thickness lighted the sombre walls, hung with black cloth; whilst chorister boys walked up and down chanting hymns in honour of the deceased, and flinging incense in the air from silver vessels suspended by silver chains, which they carried in their hands; thus shedding fragrance around, and chasing the fearful odour of mortality even from the very chamber of death. Priests wrapped in funeral garments also slowly paraded the room, muttering prayers, and joining occasionally their full, deep-toned voices with the shriller chant of the boys.
The space where the public were admitted, was railed off from the lower end of the hall; but near the body knelt a beautiful female arrayed in black velvet, and her fair face and arms shaded by a veil of black crape.—
"O Osiris!" cried a figure wrapped in a long dark cloak, grasping the arm of Father Morris, "who is that lovely creature? There, bending over the last awful relics of mortality, methinks she looks beauteous as the phœnix rising from the funeral pile, and triumphing in glory over the impotent malice of the grave."
"Hush! hush! for Heaven's sake!" whispered the deep, full voice of Father Morris; "it is Elvira, the rival of Rosabella, whom you have sworn to support."
"Typhon himself could not injure her," said Cheops, for it was he; and he stood with his eyes fixed upon her, apparently lost in meditation.
"For mercy's sake, let us go on!" whispered the priest, "you will excite attention—we shall be discovered. Besides," continued he in a lower tone, "did you find a crown so delightful that you think you would injure her by depriving her of one?"