“Oh God! I am her destroyer!” shrieked Dudley, as the order was obeyed, and he was forced out of the chamber.
Cholmondeley was then seized by Wolfytt and the others, and thrown upon his back on the floor. He made no resistance, well knowing it would be useless; and he determined, even if he should expire under the torture, to let no expression of anguish escape him. He had need of all his fortitude; for the sharpness of the suffering to which he was subjected by the remorseless Nightgall, was such as few could have withstood. But not a groan burst from him, though his whole frame seemed rent asunder by the dreadful tension.
“Go on,” cried Nightgall, finding that Wolfytt and the others paused. “Turn the rollers round once more.”
“You will wrench his bones from their sockets,—he will expire if you do,” observed Sorrocold.
“No matter,” replied Nightgall; “I have an order to question him sharply, and I will do so, at all hazards.”
“Do so at your own responsibility, then,” replied Sorrocold, retiring. “I tell you he will die if you strain him further.”
“Go on, I say,” thundered Nightgall. But as he spoke, the sufferer fainted, and Wolfytt refused to comply with the jailor’s injunctions.
Cholmondeley was taken off the engine. Restoratives were applied by Sorrocold, and the questions proposed by the lieutenant put to him by Nightgall. But he returned no answer; and uttering an angry exclamation at his obstinacy, the jailor ordered him to be taken back to his cell, where he was thrown upon a heap of straw, and left without light or food.
For some time, Cholmondeley remained in a state of insensibility, and when he recovered, it was to endure far greater agony than he had experienced on the rack. His muscles were so strained that he was unable to move, and every bone in his body appeared broken. The thought, however, that Cicely was alive, and in the power of his hated rival, tormented him more sharply than his bodily suffering. Supposing her dead, though his heart was ever constant to her memory, and though he was a prey to deep and severe grief, yet the whirl of events in which he had been recently engaged had prevented him from dwelling altogether upon her loss. But now, when he knew that she still lived, and was in the power of Nightgall, all his passion—all his jealousy, returned with tenfold fury. The most dreadful suspicions crossed him; and his mental anguish was so great as to be almost intolerable. While thus tortured in body and mind, the door of his cell was opened, and Nightgall entered, dragging after him a female. The glare of the lamp so dazzled Cholmondeley’s weakened vision, that he involuntarily closed his eyes. But what was his surprise to hear his own name pronounced by well-known accents, and, as soon as he could steady his gaze, to behold the features of Cicely—but so pale, so emaciated, that he could scarcely recognise them.
“There,” cried Nightgall, with a look of fiendish exultation, pointing to Cholmondeley. “I told you you should sec your lover. Glut your eyes with the sight. The arms that should have clasped you are nerveless—the eyes that gazed so passionately upon you, dim—the limbs that won your admiration, crippled. Look at him—and for the last time. And let him gaze on you, and see whether in these death-pale features—in this wasted form, there are any remains of the young and blooming maiden that won his heart.”