And then, her very respiration suspended, and her blood almost congealed, as it were, in her veins, La Valliere by degrees felt that the pulsation of her wrists, her neck, and temples, began to throb more and more painfully.

These pulsations, as they gradually increased, soon changed into a species of brain fever, and in her temporary delirium she saw the figures of her friends contending with her enemies, floating before her vision.

She heard, too, mingled together in her deafened ears, words of menace and words of fond affection; she seemed raised out of her existence as though it were upon the wings of a mighty tempest, and in the dim horizon of the path along which her delirium hurried her, she saw the stone which covered her tomb upraised, and the grim, appalling texture of eternal night revealed to her distracted gaze.

But the horror of the dream which possessed her senses faded away, and she was again restored to the habitual resignation of her character.

A ray of hope penetrated her heart, as a ray of sunlight streams into the dungeon of some unhappy captive.