As if the crimes into which his passion had seduced him had only increased its violence, he longed more eagerly than ever to enjoy Antonia. The same success in concealing his present guilt, he trusted would attend his future. He was deaf to the murmurs of conscience, and resolved to satisfy his desires at any price. He waited only for an opportunity of repeating his former enterprise; but to procure that opportunity by the same means was now impracticable. In the first transports of despair he had dashed the enchanted myrtle into a thousand pieces: Matilda told him plainly that he must expect no further assistance from the infernal powers unless he was willing to subscribe to their established conditions. This Ambrosio was determined not to do: he persuaded himself that however great might be his iniquity, so long as he preserved his claim to salvation, he need not despair of pardon. He therefore resolutely refused to enter into any bond or compact with the fiends; and Matilda finding him obstinate upon this point, forbore to press him further. She exerted her invention to discover some means of putting Antonia into the abbot’s power: nor was it long before that means presented itself.
While her ruin was thus meditating, the unhappy girl herself suffered severely from the loss of her mother. Every morning on waking, it was her first care to hasten to Elvira’s chamber. On that which followed Ambrosio’s fatal visit, she woke later than was her usual custom: of this she was convinced by the abbey chimes. She started from her bed, threw on a few loose garments hastily, and was speeding to enquire how her mother had passed the night, when her foot struck against something which lay in her passage. She looked down. What was her horror at recognizing Elvira’s livid corse! She uttered a loud shriek, and threw herself upon the floor. She clasped the inanimate form to her bosom, felt that it was dead-cold, and with a movement of disgust, of which she was not the mistress, let it fall again from her arms. The cry had alarmed Flora, who hastened to her assistance. The sight which she beheld penetrated her with horror; but her alarm was more audible than Antonia’s. She made the house ring with her lamentations, while her mistress, almost suffocated with grief, could only mark her distress by sobs and groans. Flora’s shrieks soon reached the ears of the hostess, whose terror and surprise were excessive on learning the cause of this disturbance. A physician was immediately sent for: but on the first moment of beholding the corse, he declared that Elvira’s recovery was beyond the power of art. He proceeded therefore to give his assistance to Antonia, who by this time was truly in need of it. She was conveyed to bed, while the landlady busied herself in giving orders for Elvira’s burial. Dame Jacintha was a plain good kind of woman, charitable, generous, and devout: but her intellects were weak, and she was a miserable slave to fear and superstition. She shuddered at the idea of passing the night in the same house with a dead body: she was persuaded that Elvira’s ghost would appear to her, and no less certain that such a visit would kill her with fright. From this persuasion, she resolved to pass the night at a neighbour’s, and insisted that the funeral should take place the next day. St. Clare’s cemetery being the nearest, it was determined that Elvira should be buried there. Dame Jacintha engaged to defray every expense attending the burial. She knew not in what circumstances Antonia was left, but from the sparing manner in which the family had lived, she concluded them to be indifferent.
Consequently, she entertained very little hope of ever being recompensed; but this consideration prevented her not from taking care that the interment was performed with decency, and from showing the unfortunate Antonia all possible respect.
Nobody dies of mere grief; of this Antonia was an
