d her nights uneasy; and
in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of
motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded
had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the
phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length
convalescent--finally well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second
more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from
this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered.
Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more
alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions
of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease which
had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to
be eradicated by human means, I could not fall to observe a similar
increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her
excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more
frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds--of the slight sounds--and
of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly
alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this
distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She
had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching,
with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her
emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of
the ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low
whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear--of
motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was
rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her
(what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost
inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures
upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of
the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had proved to me
that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to
be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where
was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her
physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as
I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a
startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that