Having closed and secured the door on Lady Montbarry's departure,Agnes put on her dressing-gown, and, turning to her open boxes,began the business of unpacking. In the hurry of making her toiletfor dinner, she had taken the first dress that lay uppermostin the trunk, and had thrown her travelling costume on the bed.She now opened the doors of the wardrobe for the first time,and began to hang her dresses on the hooks in the large compartment onone side.

After a few minutes only of this occupation, she grew weary of it,and decided on leaving the trunks as they were, until the next morning.The oppressive south wind, which had blown throughout the day,still prevailed at night. The atmosphere of the room felt close;Agnes threw a shawl over her head and shoulders, and, opening the window,stepped into the balcony to look at the view.

The night was heavy and overcast: nothing could be distinctly seen.The canal beneath the window looked like a black gulf;the opposite houses were barely visible as a row of shadows,dimly relieved against the starless and moonless sky.At long intervals, the warning cry of a belated gondolier wasjust audible, as he turned the corner of a distant canal, and calledto invisible boats which might be approaching him in the darkness.Now and then, the nearer dip of an oar in the water told of the viewlesspassage of other gondolas bringing guests back to the hotel.Excepting these rare sounds, the mysterious night-silence of Venice wasliterally the silence of the grave.

Leaning on the parapet of the balcony, Agnes looked vacantly intothe black void beneath. Her thoughts reverted to the miserable manwho had broken his pledged faith to her, and who had died in that house.Some change seemed to have come over her since her arrival in Venice;some new influence appeared to be at work. For the first timein her experience of herself, compassion and regret were not the onlyemotions aroused in her by the remembrance of the dead Montbarry.A keen sense of the wrong that she had suffered, never yetfelt by that gentle and forgiving nature, was felt by it now.She found herself thinking of the bygone days of her humiliationalmost as harshly as Henry Westwick had thought of them--she who had rebuked him the last time he had spoken slightinglyof his brother in her presence! A sudden fear and doubt of herself,startled her physically as well as morally. She turned from the shadowyabyss of the dark water as if the mystery and the gloom of it hadbeen answerable for the emotions which had taken her by surprise.Abruptly closing the window, she threw aside her shawl, and litthe candles on the mantelpiece, impelled by a sudden craving for light inthe solitude of her room.

The cheering brightness round her, contrasting with the blackgloom outside, restored her spirits. She felt herself enjoyingthe light like a child!

Would it be well (she asked herself) to get ready for bed? No! The senseof drowsy fatigue that she had felt half an hour since was gone.She returned to the dull employment of unpacking her boxes.After a few minutes only, the occupation became irksome to her once more.She sat down by the table, and took up a guide-book. 'Suppose Iinform myself,' she thought, 'on the subject of Venice?'

Her attention wandered from the book, before she had turnedthe first page of it.

The image of Henry Westwick was the presiding image in her memory now.Recalling the minutest incidents and details of the evening,she could think of nothing which presented him under other thana favourable and interesting aspect. She smiled to herself softly,her colour rose by fine gradations, as she felt the full luxuryof dwelling on the perfect truth and modesty of his devotion to her.Was the depression of spirits from which she had suffered sopersistently on her travels attributable, by any chance, to theirlong separation from each other--embittered perhaps by her own vainregret when she remembered her harsh reception of him in Paris?Suddenly conscious of this bold question, and of the self-abandonmentwhich it implied, she returned mechanically to her book,distrusting the unrestrained liberty of her own thoughts.What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their hiding-placesin a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!With her heart in the tomb of the dead Montbarry, could Agnes even thinkof another man, and think of love? How shameful! how unworthy of her!For the second time, she tried to interest herself in the guide-book--and once more she tried in vain. Throwing the book aside,she turned desperately to the one resource that was left,to her luggage--resolved to fatigue herself without mercy,until she was weary enough and sleepy enough to find a safe refugein bed.

For some little time, she persisted in the monotonous occupationof transferring her clothes from her trunk to the wardrobe.The large clock in the hall, striking mid-night, reminded her that itwas getting late. She sat down for a moment in an arm-chair bythe bedside, to rest.

The silence in the house now caught her attention, and held it--held it disagreeably. Was everybody in bed and asleep but herself?Surely it was time for her to follow the general example? With acertain irritable nervous haste, she rose again and undressed herself.'I have lost two hours of rest,' she thought, frowning at the reflectionof herself in the glass, as she arranged her hair for the night.'I shall be good for nothing to-morrow!'

She lit the night-light, and extinguished the candles--with one exception, which she removed to a little table, placed onthe side of the bed opposite to the side occupied by the arm-chair.Having put her travelling-box of matches and the guide-book nearthe candle, in case she might be sleepless and might want to read,she blew out the light, and laid her head on the pillow.

The curtains of the bed were looped back to let the air passfreely over her. Lying on her left side, with her face turnedaway from the table, she could see the arm-chair by the dimnight-light. It had a chintz covering--representing largebunches of roses scattered over a pale green ground. She triedto weary herself into drowsiness by counting over and over againthe bunches of roses that were visible from her point of view.Twice her attention was distracted from the counting, by sounds outside--by the clock chiming the half-hour past twelve; and then again,by the fall of a pair of boots on the upper floor, thrown out tobe cleaned, with that barbarous disregard of the comfort of otherswhich is observable in humanity when it inhabits an hotel.In the silence that followed these passing disturbances, Agnes went oncounting the roses on the arm-chair, more and more slowly. Before long,she confused herself in the figures--tried to begin counting again--thought she would wait a little first--felt her eyelids drooping,and her head reclining lower and lower on the pillow--sighed faintly--and sank into sleep.

How long that first sleep lasted, she never knew. She couldonly remember, in the after-time, that she woke instantly.

Every faculty and perception in her passed the boundary linebetween insensibility and consciousness, so to speak, at a leap.Without knowing why, she sat up suddenly in the bed,listening for she knew not what. Her head was in a whirl; her heartbeat furiously, without any assignable cause. But one trivialevent had happened during the interval while she had been asleep.The night-light had gone out; and the room, as a matter of course,was in total darkness.

She felt for the match-box, and paused after finding it.A vague sense of confusion was still in her mind. She was in no hurryto light the match. The pause in the darkness was, for the moment,agreeable to her.

In the quieter flow of her thoughts during this interval,she could ask herself the natural question:--What cause hadawakened her so suddenly, and had so strangely shaken her nerves?Had it been the influence of a dream? She had not dreamedat all--or, to speak more correctly, she had no waking remembranceof having dreamed. The mystery was beyond her fathoming:the darkness began to oppress her. She struck the match on the box,and lit her candle.

As the welcome light diffused itself over the room, she turnedfrom the table and looked towards the other side of the bed.

In the moment when she turned, the chill of a sudden terror grippedher round the heart, as with the clasp of an icy hand.

She was not alone in her room!

There--in the chair at the bedside--there, suddenly revealed underthe flow of light from the candle, was the figure of a woman, reclining.Her head lay back over the chair. Her face, turned up to the ceiling,had the eyes closed, as if she was wrapped in a deep sleep.

The shock of the discovery held Agnes speechless and helpless.Her first conscious action, when she was in some degree mistress ofherself again, was to lean over the bed, and to look closer at the womanwho had so incomprehensibly stolen into her room in the dead of night.One glance was enough: she started back with a cry of amazement.The person in the chair was no other than the widow of the dead Montbarry--the woman who had warned her that they were to meet again,and that the place might be Venice!

Her courage returned to her, stung into action by the natural senseof indignation which the presence of the Countess provoked.

'Wake up!' she called out. 'How dare you come here? How did you get in?Leave the room--or I will call for help!'

She raised her voice at the last words. It produced no effect.Leaning farther over the bed, she boldly took the Countessby the shoulder and shook her. Not even this effort succeededin rousing the sleeping woman. She still lay back in the chair,possessed by a torpor like the torpor of death--insensible to sound,insensible to touch. Was she really sleeping? Or had she fainted?

Agnes looked closer at her. She had not fainted. Her breathingwas audible, rising and falling in deep heavy gasps. At intervalsshe ground her teeth savagely. Beads of perspiration stood thicklyon her forehead. Her clenched hands rose and fell slowly from timeto time on her lap. Was she in the agony of a dream? or was shespiritually conscious of something hidden in the room?

The doubt involved in that last question was unendurable.Agnes determined to rouse the servants who kept watch in the hotelat night.

The bell-handle was fixed to the wall, on the side of the bedby which the table stood.

She raised herself from the crouching position which she had assumedin looking close at the Countess; and, turning towards the other sideof the bed, stretched out her hand to the bell. At the same instant,she stopped and looked upward. Her hand fell helplessly at her side.She shuddered, and sank back on the pillow.

What had she seen?

She had seen another intruder in her room.

Midway between her face and the ceiling, there hovered a human head--severed at the neck, like a head struck from the body by the guillotine.

Nothing visible, nothing audible, had given her any intelligiblewarning of its appearance. Silently and suddenly, the head hadtaken its place above her. No supernatural change had passedover the room, or was perceptible in it now. The dumbly-torturedfigure in the chair; the broad window opposite the foot of the bed,with the black night beyond it; the candle burning on the table--these, and all other objects in the room, remained unaltered.One object more, unutterably horrid, had been added to the rest.That was the only change--no more, no less.

By the yellow candlelight she saw the head distinctly,hovering in mid-air above her. She looked at it steadfastly,spell-bound by the terror that held her.

The flesh of the face was gone. The shrivelled skin was darkenedin hue, like the skin of an Egyptian mummy--except at the neck.There it was of a lighter colour; there it showed spots and splashesof the hue of that brown spot on the ceiling, which the child'sfanciful terror had distorted into the likeness of a spot of blood.Thin remains of a discoloured moustache and whiskers, hanging overthe upper lip, and over the hollows where the cheeks had once been,made the head just recognisable as the head of a man. Over allthe features death and time had done their obliterating work.The eyelids were closed. The hair on the skull, discoloured likethe hair on the face, had been burnt away in places. The bluish lips,parted in a fixed grin, showed the double row of teeth.By slow degrees, the hovering head (perfectly still when shefirst saw it) began to descend towards Agnes as she lay beneath.By slow degrees, that strange doubly-blended odour, which theCommissioners had discovered in the vaults of the old palace--which had sickened Francis Westwick in the bed-chamber ofthe new hotel--spread its fetid exhalations over the room.Downward and downward the hideous apparition made its slow progress,until it stopped close over Agnes--stopped, and turned slowly,so that the face of it confronted the upturned face of the woman inthe chair.

There was a pause. Then, a supernatural movement disturbed the rigidrepose of the dead face.

The closed eyelids opened slowly. The eyes revealed themselves,bright with the glassy film of death--and fixed their dreadful lookon the woman in the chair.

Agnes saw that look; saw the eyelids of the living woman open slowlylike the eyelids of the dead; saw her rise, as if in obedienceto some silent command--and saw no more.

Her next conscious impression was of the sunlight pouring in atthe window; of the friendly presence of Lady Montbarry at the bedside;and of the children's wondering faces peeping in at the door.