From the day of their arrest, Rose and her brother, partly through the influence of a bribe, partly through Lomaque's intercession, had been confined together in one cell; and together they now awaited the dread event of the morrow.
To Rose that event was death--death, to the thought of which, at least, she was now resigned.

To Trudaine the fast-nearing future was darkening hour by hour, with the uncertainty which is worse than death; with the faint, fearful, unpartaken suspense, which keeps the mind ever on the rack, and wears away the heart slowly.

Through the long unsolaced agony of that dreadful night, but one relief came to him.

The tension of every nerve, the crushing weight of the one fatal oppression that clung to every thought, relaxed a little when Rose's bodily powers began to sink under her mental exhaustion--when her sad, dying talk of the happy times that were passed ceased softly, and she laid her head on his shoulder, and let the angel of slumber take her yet for a little while, even though she lay already under the shadow of the angel of death.
The morning came, and the hot summer sunrise.

What life was left in the terror-struck city awoke for the day faintly; and still the suspense of the long night remained unlightened.