"I want no aid!" exclaimed Lord Edmund, "and, least of all, such help as you can give me. I despise alike your pity and your vengeance. Come what will, I rely upon myself. Conscious of my own integrity, I do not fear to fall, though demons should assail me. Avaunt then, fiend, for over me thou hast no power!"
Cheops burst into one of his fiendish laughs, and exclaiming, "That time will show," disappeared.
Edmund felt relieved by his absence, though, in spite of his boasted firmness, and the sovereign contempt he expressed for the Mummy, he could not prevent his mind from dwelling upon the circumstance. The appearance of Cheops, indeed, never failed to excite a deep and powerful interest in the minds of all who conversed with him, whilst his appalling laugh struck terror to the firmest breast, and even those who affected to despise his menaces could not prevent their minds from dwelling upon his words. This irresistible power had its full effect upon the mind of Edmund, and, though he endeavoured in vain to shake it off and rouse his mind to think of other things, still the gigantic Mummy seemed to stalk before him. In vain did he strive to picture to himself his interview with the Queen; the hideous features of the Mummy rose in his imagination instead of the lovely form of Elvira, till at length, fatigued and exhausted, he threw himself upon his couch: yet even in his dreams the same image haunted him, and the same words rang in his ears.
Whilst these scenes were taking place in the prison, Elvira was suffering all the torments of a burning fever; she was, indeed, seriously ill: the excessive agitation of her mind, and the horror she felt at the idea of being the murderer of Ferdinand, had overpowered her reason; and by the time Dr. Coleman arrived, (he having been sent for on the first alarm,) she was quite delirious. The thought that she alone had caused the danger of Ferdinand, occupied her mind; and, not being able to bear the idea that her folly might occasion the destruction of a human being, she raved of him incessantly, and repeatedly offered to sacrifice her life to preserve his.
Her ravings were heard by her domestics, and being neither exactly understood, nor correctly repeated, their reports, aided by the artful insinuations of Father Morris, soon produced rumours throughout the city, that the Queen was violently in love with Prince Ferdinand, and had gone mad because the law did not permit her to marry him. The effect this idea produced was prodigious; it was implicitly believed, for the lower classes are naturally fond of the marvellous, and, when there are two sides to a question, are very seldom disposed to err by judging too favourably; whilst the indignation it excited was unbounded. In some cases, men are more tenacious of their prejudices than of their rights. Thus, then, though the English, by consenting to the marriage of their Queen, had deprived themselves of the important right of electing their own Sovereign; they considered what they had done as trifling, when compared with the horror they felt at the thought of submitting to a foreign King: whilst the emissaries of Rosabella, taking advantage of this feeling, by alternately playing upon their fears, and magnifying their terrors, worked them up almost to a state of desperation.
The party of Elvira, in the mean time, was quite unable to stem the torrent opposed to it. The Queen and her father were both too ill to leave their beds, and Lord Edmund was in prison.
"What will become of us?" whispered Emma to Dr. Coleman, one day in the chamber of Elvira, when she fancied the Queen to be asleep. "To-morrow Prince Ferdinand and Lord Edmund are to be tried, and, they say, not even the Queen has power to pardon them if they are convicted."
"It is but too true," returned Dr. Coleman; "they must die, and the punishment is horrid. The criminal is doomed to be burned by a slow fire."
"Horrible!" cried Emma; "and this only for drawing a sword in the vicinity of a royal palace."
"Alas! that is not all! Ferdinand is accused of wishing to marry the Queen; and the laws that devote to a horrid death the man who shall presume to address her in the language of love, yet hold good against foreigners."