as a bird's talons
on its prey; sometimes they wander over that brow, where the furrows
seem torn as the thunder scars, as if to wipe from it a stain, or charm
from it a pang; sometimes they gather up the hem of that sordid robe,
and seem, for hours together, striving to rub from it a soil. Then, out
from prolonged silence, without cause or warning, will ring, peal after
peal (till the frame, exhausted with the effort sinks senseless into
stupor), the frightful laugh. But speech, intelligible and coherent,
those lips rarely yield. There are times, indeed, when the attendants
are persuaded that her mind in part returns to her; and those times
experience has taught them to watch with peculiar caution. The crisis
evinces itself by a change in the manner,--by a quick apprehension of
all that is said; by a straining, anxious look at the dismal walls; by
a soft, fawning docility; by murmured complaints of the chains that
fetter; and (though, as we have said, but very rarely) by prayers, that
seem rational, for greater ease and freedom.

In the earlier time of her dread captivity, perhaps when it was believed
at the asylum that she was a patient of condition, with friends who
cared for her state, and would liberally reward her cure, they in those
moments relaxed her confinement, and sought the gentler remedies their
art employs; but then invariably, and, it was said, with a cunning that
surpassed all the proverbial astuteness of the mad, she turned this
indulgence to the most deadly uses,--she crept to the pallet of some
adjacent sufferer weaker than herself, and the shrieks that brought the
attendants into the cell scarcely saved the intended victim from her
hands. It seemed, in those imperfectly lucid intervals, as if the reason
only returned to guide her to destroy,--only to animate the broken
mechanism into the beast of prey.

Years have now passed since her entrance within those walls. He who
placed her there never had returned. He had given a false name,--no clew
to him was obtained; the gold he had left was but the quarter's pay.
When Varney had been first apprehended, Percival requested the younger
Ardworth to seek the forger in prison, and to question him as to Madame
Dalibard; but Varney was then so apprehensive that, even if still
insane, her very ravings might betray his share in her crimes, or still
more, if she recovered, that the remembrance of her son's murder would
awaken the repentance and the confession of