| 375 | 376 | 377 | 378 | 379 |
| 1 | 100 | 200 | 300 | 400 |
|
through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a
consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair,
I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted
upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige
of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning
glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the
once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow
temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and jarring
discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy
of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and
seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare
to he contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a
smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed
themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them,
or that, having done so, I had died!
*
* * * *
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my
cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber
of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away,
the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their
377
Page
Quick Jump
|