"
She buried her face in her hands, and endeavored to shut out the
grotesque and phantom-like forms that seemed to dance before her. A
deathlike stillness reigned through the house, the silence alone broken
by the ticking of the great dial at the head of the staircase. There is
something inexpressibly awful in the ticking of a clock, when heard at
midnight by the lonely and anxious watcher beside the bed of death. It
is the voice of time marking its slow but certain progress towards
eternity, and warning us in solemn tones that it will soon cease to
number the hours for the sufferer for ever. Elinor trembled as she
listened to the low monotonous measured sounds; and she felt at that
moment a presentiment that her own weary pilgrimage on earth was drawing
to a close.
"Oh, Algernon!" she thought; "it may be a crime, but I sometimes think
that if I could see you once more--only once more--I could forget all
my wrongs and sufferings, and die in peace."
The unuttered thought was scarcely formed, when a slight rustling noise
shook the curtains of the bed, and the next moment a tall figure in
white glided across the room. It drew nearer, and Elinor, in spite of
the wish she had just dared to whisper to herself, struggled with the
vision, as a sleeper does with the night-mare, when the suffocating
grasp of the fiend is upon his throat.
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