Her rising, though she had not joined in the conversation for the last hour or more, broke up the company, and in a few minutes they had all withdrawn, each to his own apartment; and Jasper was left alone, with the brands dying out one by one on the hearth-stone, and an old tabby cat dozing near the andirons; this night he had no other watchers, and none were there to hear or see what befell him during the hours of darkness.
But had there been any one present in that old apartment, he would have seen that the sleep of the young man was strangely restless and perturbed, that the sweat-drops stood in large cold beads upon his brow, that his features were from time to time fearfully distorted, as if by pain and horror, and that he tossed his arms to and fro, as if he were wrestling with some powerful but intangible oppressor.
From time to time, moreover, he uttered groans and strangely murmured sounds, and a few articulate words; but these so unconnected, and at so long intervals asunder, that no human skill could have combined them into any thing like intelligible sentences. At length with a wild, shrill cry, he started up erect in his bed, his hair bristling with terror, and the cold sweat flowing off his face like rain-drops.
“Oh, God!” he cried, “avert—defend! Horror! horror!” Then raising his hands slowly to his brow, he felt himself, grasped his arm, and sought for the pulsations of his heart, as if he were laboring to satisfy himself that he was awake.
At length, he murmured, “It was a dream! The Lord be praised! it was but a dream! and yet, how terrible, how vivid. Even now, I can scarce believe that I was not awake and saw it.”
But as his eye ran over the objects to which it had become accustomed during the last days, and which were now indistinctly visible in the glimmering darkness of a fine summer night, he became fully satisfied that he had been indeed asleep; and with a muttered prayer, he settled himself down again on the pillow, and composed himself to sleep once more.
He had not slept, however, above half an hour before the same painful symptoms recurred; and after even a longer and more agonizing struggle than the first, he again woke, panting, horror-stricken, pale and almost paralyzed with superstitious terror.
“It was!” he gasped, “it was—it must have been reality. I saw her, as I did last night, tangible, face to face; but, oh God! what a glare of horror in those beautiful blue eyes—what a gory spot on that smooth, white brow—what agony—what supplication in every lovely feature. And he, he who dealt the blow—I could not see the face, but the dress, the figure, nay, the seat on horseback—great God! they were all mine own!”
He paused for a long time, meditating deeply, and casting furtive glances around the large old-fashioned room, as though he expected to see some of the great heavy shadows which brooded in the dim angles and irregular recesses of the walls, detach themselves from their lurking places, in the guise of human forms disembodied, and come forth to confront him.
After a while, however, his naturally strong intellect and characteristic audacity led him to discard the idea of supernatural influence in the appalling vision, which had now twice so cruelly disturbed him. Still, so great had been the suffering and torture of his mind during the conflict of the sleeping body and the sleepless intellect, that he actually dreaded the return of slumber, lest that dread phantom should return with it; and he therefore exerted himself to keep awake, and to arm his mind against the insidious stealing on of sleep, from very fear of what should follow.