Since then, sir, whenever I have
desired to search back in my memory for remembrances of my early days
that tall, pale woman has risen before me, the image of melancholy. There
she is," pointing to a picture on the wall--"there she is!--not such as
illness made her as my father supposes, but that fatal and terrible
secret. See!"
I turned round, and as my eye dwelt upon the portrait the lady pointed
to, I shuddered.
It was a long, pale, thin face, cold and rigid as death, and only luridly
lighted up by two dark, deep-set eyes, fixed, burning, and of a terrible
intensity.
There was a moment's silence.
"How much that woman must have suffered!" I said to myself with a pain
striking at my heart.
"I know not how my mother made that terrible discovery," added Odile,
"but she became aware of the mysterious attraction of the Black Pest and
their meetings in Hugh Lupus's tower; she knew it all--all! She never
suspected my father--ah no!--but she perished away by slow degrees under
this consuming influence! and I myself am dying."
I bowed my head into my hands and wept in silence.
"One night," she went on, "one night--I was only ten--and my mother, with
the remains of her superhuman energy, for she was near her end that
night, came to me when I lay asleep.
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