Everything was perfect, from the wreath and veil to the tiny sandaled feet and lying there in her mute repose she looked more like some exquisite piece of sculpture than anything that had ever lived and moved in this groveling world of ours.

But from one shoulder the dress had been pulled down, and there lay a great livid purple plague-spot! "Come away!" said Ormiston, catching his companion by the arm.

"It is death to remain here!" Sir Norman had been standing like one in a trance, from which this address roused him, and he grasped Ormiston's shoulder almost frantically.
"Look there, Ormiston! There lies the very face that sorceress showed me, fifteen minutes ago, in her infernal caldron! I would know it at the other end of the world!" "Are you sure ?" said Ormiston, glancing again with new curiosity at the marble face.

"I never saw anything half so beautiful in all my life; but you see she is dead of the plague." "Dead?
she cannot be! Nothing so perfect could die!" "Look there," said Ormiston pointing to the plague-spot.

"There is the fatal token! For Heaven's sake let us get out of this, or we will share the same fate before morning!" But Sir Norman did not move--could not move; he stood there rooted to the spot by the spell of that lovely, lifeless face.
Usually the plague left its victims hideous, ghastly, discolored, and covered with blotches; but in this case then was nothing to mar the perfect beauty of the satin-smooth skin, but that one dreadful mark.
There Sir Norman stood in his trance, as motionless as if some genie out of the "Arabian Nights" had suddenly turned him into stone (a trick they were much addicted to), and destined him to remain there an ornamental fixture for ever.