n lips, that scarcely moved with the exertion.
'I am very cold,' it said--'but if I complain, you will beat me.' She
fell down again upon the bed, and hid her face.

"My guide, who was leaning carelessly by the window, turned to me with
a sort of smirk--'This is her way, Sir,' he said; 'her madness is of a
very singular description: we have not, as yet, been able to discover
how far it extends; sometimes she seems conscious of the past, sometimes
utterly oblivious of every thing: for days she is perfectly silent, or,
at least, says nothing more than you have just heard; but, at times, she
raves so violently, that--that--but I never use force where it can be
helped.'

"I looked at the man, but I could not answer, unless I had torn him to
pieces on the spot. I turned away hastily from the room; but I did not
quit the house without Gertrude--I placed her in the carriage, by my
side--notwithstanding all the protestations and fears of the keeper:
these were readily silenced by the sum I gave him; it was large enough
to have liberated half his household. In fact, I gathered from his
conversation, that Tyrrell had spoken of Gertrude as an unhappy female
whom he himself had seduced, and would now be rid of. I thank you,
Pelham, for that frown, but keep your indignation till a fitter season
for it.

"I took my victim, for I then regarded her as such, to a secluded and
lonely spot: I procured for her whatever advice England could afford;
all was in vain. Night and day I was by her side, but she never, for
a moment, seemed to recollect me: yet were there times of fierce and
overpowering delirium, when my name was uttered in the transport of
the most passionate enthusiasm--when my features as absent, though not
present, were recalled and dwelt upon with all the minuteness of the
most faithful detail; and I knelt by her in all those moments, when no
other human being was near, and clasped her wan hand, and wiped the dew
from her forehead, and gazed upon her convulsed and changing face, and
called upon her in a voice which could once have allayed her wildest
emotions; and had the agony of seeing her eye dwell upon me with the
most estranged indifference and the most vehement and fearful aversion.
But ever and anon, she uttered words which chilled the very marrow of
my bones; words which I would not, dared not believe, had any meaning or
method in their madness--but which entered into my own brain, and
preyed there like the devouri