Dorothee's spirits being now more composed, she rose, and unlocked the door that led into the late Marchioness's apartment, and Emily passed into a lofty chamber, hung round with dark arras, and so spacious, that the lamp she held up did not shew its extent; while Dorothee, when she entered, had dropped into a chair, where, sighing deeply, she scarcely trusted herself with the view of a scene so affecting to her.It was some time before Emily perceived, through the dusk, the bed on which the Marchioness was said to have died;when, advancing to the upper end of the room, she discovered the high canopied tester of dark green damask, with the curtains descending to the floor in the fashion of a tent, half drawn, and remaining apparently, as they had been left twenty years before; and over the whole bedding was thrown a counterpane, or pall, of black velvet, that hung down to the floor.Emily shuddered, as she held the lamp over it, and looked within the dark curtains, where she almost expected to have seen a human face, and, suddenly remembering the horror she had suffered upon discovering the dying Madame Montoni in the turret-chamber of Udolpho, her spirits fainted, and she was turning from the bed, when Dorothee, who had now reached it, exclaimed, 'Holy Virgin! methinks I see my lady stretched upon that pall--as when last I saw her!'
Emily, shocked by this exclamation, looked involuntarily again within the curtains, but the blackness of the pall only appeared; while Dorothee was compelled to support herself upon the side of the bed, and presently tears brought her some relief.
'Ah!' said she, after she had wept awhile, 'it was here I sat on that terrible night, and held my lady's hand, and heard her last words, and saw all her sufferings--HERE she died in my arms!'
'Do not indulge these painful recollections,' said Emily, 'let us go.
Shew me the picture you mentioned, if it will not too much affect you.'
'It hangs in the oriel,' said Dorothee rising, and going towards a small door near the bed's head, which she opened, and Emily followed with the light, into the closet of the late Marchioness.
'Alas! there she is, ma'amselle,' said Dorothee, pointing to a portrait of a lady, 'there is her very self! just as she looked when she came first to the chateau.You see, madam, she was all blooming like you, then--and so soon to be cut off!'
While Dorothee spoke, Emily was attentively examining the picture, which bore a strong resemblance to the miniature, though the expression of the countenance in each was somewhat different; but still she thought she perceived something of that pensive melancholy in the portrait, which so strongly characterised the miniature.
'Pray, ma'amselle, stand beside the picture, that I may look at you together,' said Dorothee, who, when the request was complied with, exclaimed again at the resemblance.Emily also, as she gazed upon it, thought that she had somewhere seen a person very like it, though she could not now recollect who this was.
In this closet were many memorials of the departed Marchioness; a robe and several articles of her dress were scattered upon the chairs, as if they had just been thrown off.On the floor were a pair of black satin slippers, and, on the dressing-table, a pair of gloves and a long black veil, which, as Emily took it up to examine, she perceived was dropping to pieces with age.
'Ah!' said Dorothee, observing the veil, 'my lady's hand laid it there; it has never been moved since!'
Emily, shuddering, immediately laid it down again.'I well remember seeing her take it off,' continued Dorothee, 'it was on the night before her death, when she had returned from a little walk I had persuaded her to take in the gardens, and she seemed refreshed by it.
I told her how much better she looked, and I remember what a languid smile she gave me; but, alas! she little thought, or I either, that she was to die, that night.'
Dorothee wept again, and then, taking up the veil, threw it suddenly over Emily, who shuddered to find it wrapped round her, descending even to her feet, and, as she endeavoured to throw it off, Dorothee intreated that she would keep it on for one moment.'I thought,'
added she, 'how like you would look to my dear mistress in that veil;--may your life, ma'amselle, be a happier one than hers!'
Emily, having disengaged herself from the veil, laid it again on the dressing-table, and surveyed the closet, where every object, on which her eye fixed, seemed to speak of the Marchioness.In a large oriel window of painted glass, stood a table, with a silver crucifix, and a prayer-book open; and Emily remembered with emotion what Dorothee had mentioned concerning her custom of playing on her lute in this window, before she observed the lute itself, lying on a corner of the table, as if it had been carelessly placed there by the hand, that had so often awakened it.
'This is a sad forlorn place!' said Dorothee, 'for, when my dear lady died, I had no heart to put it to rights, or the chamber either; and my lord never came into the rooms after, so they remain just as they did when my lady was removed for interment.'