All were convinced that if such an event occurred, her savage lord would execute his threat.
The words of the count echoed in the bosom of the young wife, then pregnant; one of those presentiments which furrow a track like lightning through the soul, told her that her child would be born at seven months.
An inward heat overflowed her from head to foot, sending the life's blood to her heart with such violence that the surface of her body felt bathed in ice.

From that hour not a day had passed that the sense of secret terror did not check every impulse of her innocent gaiety.

The memory of the look, of the inflections of voice with which the count accompanied his words, still froze her blood, and silenced her sufferings, as she leaned over that sleeping head, and strove to see some sign of a pity she had vainly sought there when awake.
The child, threatened with death before its life began, made so vigorous a movement that she cried aloud, in a voice that seemed like a sigh, "Poor babe!" She said no more; there are ideas that a mother cannot bear.

Incapable of reasoning at this moment, the countess was almost choked with the intensity of a suffering as yet unknown to her.

Two tears, escaping from her eyes, rolled slowly down her cheeks, and traced two shining lines, remaining suspended at the bottom of that white face, like dewdrops on a lily.