But
the awful outlines of that large black coffin remained upon my imagination
with a new and terrible sense of death.
I had no more any wish to see him. I felt a horror even of the room, and
for more than an hour after a kind of despair and terror, such as I have
never experienced before or since at the idea of death.
Cousin Monica had had her bed placed in my room, and Mary Quince's moved to
the dressing-room adjoining it. For the first time the superstitious awe
that follows death, but not immediately, visited me. The idea of seeing my
father enter the room, or open the door and look in, haunted me. After Lady
Knollys and I were in bed, I could not sleep. The wind sounded mournfully
outside, and the small sounds, the rattlings, and strainings that responded
from within, constantly startled me, and simulated the sounds of steps, of
doors opening, of knockings, and so forth, rousing me with a palpitating
heart as often as I fell into a doze.
At length the wind subsided, and these ambiguous noises abated, and I,
fatigued, dropped into a quiet sleep. I was awakened by a sound in the
gallery--which I could not define.
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