With a heart torn and distracted, and almost bereft of reason, he paced the floor violently backwards and forwards. His ear then caught, from time to time, the distant and subdued shouts of merriment and laughter. These again stung him to fury. [[146]]
“What!” cried he aloud, “do they make sport of her purity and her misery? Villains! demons! hell-hounds!” And he again raved about his prison with yet greater fury than before, a thousand horrible ideas arising to his heated and prolific imagination.
At length he flung himself on the floor, utterly exhausted both in body and mind by the intensity of his sufferings, and lay for some moments in a state of quiet, from absolute inability to give further way to the extravagance of action excited by his feelings. He had not been long in this state, however, when the distant and faint chanting of a female voice fell upon his ear. He started, and raising himself upon his elbow, listened anxiously that he might drink in the minutest portion of the sound which reached him. Though evidently coming from some far-off chamber below, he distinctly caught the notes, which he recognized to be those of a hymn to the Virgin, from the vesper service. The melody was sweet and soothing to his lacerated soul. Again it stole on him.
“The voice,” said he to himself, “that can so employ itself must come from one who may be unhappy, but who cannot suppose herself to be in any very immediate peril; nor, if her mind had been so lately suffering urgent alarm, could she have by this time composed it so far as to be able to lift it to Heaven in strains so gentle and placid.”
Though immediately afterwards convinced of the folly of such an idea, he, for a moment, almost persuaded himself that he recognized the voice of the Lady Isabelle Hepborne in that of the pious chantress. He threw himself upon his knees, and offered up his fervent orisons for help in his affliction. The voice came again upon him—and again he fancied he knew it to be that of her he loved; but although he found himself, in sound reason, obliged to discard all idea of the possibility of such a recognition, yet it clung to his broken spirit, and was as a healing balm to it, in despite of reason.
It produced one happy effect, however, by causing his agonizing thoughts to give way, at last, to the immense bodily and mental fatigue he had undergone. He dropped asleep on the bare pavement, notwithstanding the horrors that hung over him, the uncertain fate that awaited him, and the complication of misery by which he was oppressed. [[147]]
CHAPTER XIX.
Dawn in the Dungeon—An Appalling Sight—Rough Visitors.
Sir John Assueton’s sleep was deep and uninterrupted until the first dawn of morning, when he awoke and rubbed his eyelids, having, for a moment, forgotten where he was, and all that had befallen him. The first object that presented itself when he looked upwards was the figure and countenance of the dead man, hanging almost immediately over the spot where he lay. The features were horribly distorted and discoloured, by the last agonies of the violent death he had died; the tongue was thrust out, and the projected eyeballs were staring fearfully from their sockets. The sight was appalling and heart-sickening.