At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she
had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for
me.
It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with
a dreadful icy shivering.
I was listening for signals of deliverance. At ever distant sound, half
stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible
and exaggerated distinctness--'Oh Meg!--Oh cousin Monica!--Oh come! Oh
Heaven, have mercy!--Lord, have mercy!' I thought I heard a roaring and
jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Uncle Silas's room. It might be the
tipsy violence of Madame. It might--merciful Heaven!--be the arrival of
friends. I started to my feet; I listened, quivering with attention. Was
it in my brain?--was it real? I was at the door, and it seemed to open of
itself. Madame had forgotten to lock it; she was losing her head a little
by this time. The key stood in the gallery door beyond; it too, was open.
I fled wildly. There was a subsiding sound of voices in my uncle's room.
I was, I know not how, on the lobby at the great stair-head outside my
uncle's apartment.
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