At that moment, a dial, which faced the feet of the couch on which she lay, struck, with its shrill bell, the first hour of the morning.
The stroke seemed to fall upon the Countess, and paralyse her remaining faculties.
“Angiolina!” cried the Chevalier, springing from the floor—“Angiolina! speak, for mercy’s sake! Angiolina!—she is dying!”
His attention was quickly called to his own safety: a footstep as he spoke approached distinctly through the corridor.
“Angiolina!” He started to the door by which he had entered. “Ruin and despair!” it was closed without—it would not open.
The footsteps came on still. Why, then, there was but one hope—his dagger was in his hand.
The Lady Angiolina heard—she saw what was passing. She moved—she pointed. No—it was wrong—not there! She made a last effort—she spoke, once more. “Yonder, Lorenzo—There—there!”
It was but the advantage of a moment. The curtains of the couch on which the Countess was lying parted the coming and the going guest. The light fall of the swinging door by which the new visitor entered the chamber, echoed the heavy drop of that which had shut the Chevalier from view.
It was not the Count di Arestino whose approach had created this alarm, but that which followed made the presence of his Lordship speedily desired. The female who entered the chamber found her mistress lying insensible, and in a state which left little doubt of her immediate dissolution. From that moment the Countess lived nearly two hours, but she never spoke again. Her confessor came. He pressed the cross to the lips of the expiring lady, and some said that she shrank from it; but the most believed that she was insensible, and the last absolution of the dying was administered. The Count Ubaldi stood by his wife’s bedside. He wore no outward semblance of excessive grief. It might be that his heart bled inwardly; but he scarcely dreamed who had knelt on that same spot so short a time before him.