While her thoughts were thus running over the whole range of
circumstances around her singular position, sleep overtook Capitola
and speculation was lost in brighter visions.
How long she had slept and dreamed she did not know, when something
gently awakened her. She opened her eyes calmly--to meet a vision
that brave as she was, nearly froze the blood in her warm veins.
Her chamber was illumined with an intense blue flame that lighted up
every portion of the apartment with a radiance bright as day, and in
the midst of this effulgence moved a figure clothed in white--a
beautiful, pale, spectral woman, whose large, motionless black eyes,
deeply set in her death-like face, and whose long unbound black
hair, fallen upon her white raiment, were the only marks of color
about her marble form.
Paralyzed with wonder, Capitola watched this figure as it glided
about the chamber. The apparition approached the dressing-table,
seemed to take something thence, and then gliding toward the bed, to
Capitola's inexpressible horror drew back the curtains and bent down
and gazed upon her! Capitola had no power to scream, to move or to
avert her gaze from those awful eyes that met her own, until at
length, as the spectral head bent lower, she felt the pressure of a
pair of icy lips upon her brow and closed her eyes!
When she opened them again the vision had departed and the room was
dark and quiet.
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