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62

A sickly faintness passes o'er my heart.

Lean here a while; thou canst not hear me yet.

I'm better now.

But we will pause a while.

Proceed, proceed! I'll listen, though thy words Were each the spiked tooth of a martyr's wheel. Proceed:—Some two hours since

Some two hours since, as, not disposed to sleep, I was perusing that old book of stories, I heard, and, as I judged, close to the door, Two persons speaking in the gallery. The voice of Maurice I could recognise, The other was a woman's.

And Zorada's.

Use not such frantic gestures of despair; I say not it was her's: perhaps it was not; Perhaps 't was Donna Beatrice.

No, no! It was Zorada. Absent from her chamber