"A lady dressed in black from head to foot, with a small lamp in her hand.

Seeing me, she laid her finger significantly on her lip, closed the door as cautiously as she had opened it, and, with the faltering, uncertain steps of one just risen from a sick-bed, came over to where I had been sitting, and leaned for support against my chair.

She was very pale, very calm, very young and beautiful, with just that look of passive despair in her face that one sees in Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci.

Standing thus, I observed that she kept her eyes turned from the corpse, and her attention concentrated on the portrait.

So several minutes passed, and neither of us spoke nor stirred.