She started aside, as though she felt a horrid
and scorching breath upon her cheek, as though she already felt their
unutterable import in the abysses of woe!
Conscience, long slumbering, seemed to awake; she was seized with the
anguish of despair! It seemed as though judgment were passed, and she
was doomed to wander like some rayless orb in the blackness of darkness
for ever. One fearful undefined form of terror was before her; one
consciousness of offence ever present; all idea of past and future
absorbed in one ever-during NOW, she felt that her misery was too heavy
to sustain. A groan escaped her lips, but it was an appeal to that power
for deliverance, who is not slow to hear, "nor impotent to save."
Suddenly she was roused from some deep and overpowering hallucination;
the promises of unlimited gratification to every wish prevailed no more,
the tempter's charm was broken. All was changed; the whole scene seemed
to vanish; and that form, which once appeared to her like an angel of
light, fell prostrate, writhing away in terrific and tortuous folds on
the hissing earth. The crowd scattered with a fearful yell;--she heard
a rush of wings, and a loud and dissonant scream,--and the "Bride of
Bernshaw" fell senseless to the ground.
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