Lord William turned, yet he saw not the cause of its restraint.  The lady alone seemed to be aware of some unseen intruder, and her eye darkened with apprehension.  Suddenly she sprang from the couch; a shriek from no human agency escaped her, and the spirit seemed to have passed from its abode.

Lord William threw himself on her pale and inanimate form.

“Farewell!” he cried:  “I had thought thee honest!—­Nay, lost spirit, I must not say farewell!”

He gazed on his once-loved bride with a look of such unutterable tenderness that the heart’s deep gush burst from his eyes, and he wept in that almost unendurable anguish.  The sight was too harrowing to sustain.  He was about to withdraw, when a convulsive tremor passed across her features—­a trembling like the undulation of the breeze rippling the smooth bosom of the lake; a sigh seemed to labour heavily from her breast; her eyes opened; but as though yet struggling under the influence of some terrific dream, she cried—­

“Oh, save me—­save me!” She looked upwards:  it was as if the light of heaven had suddenly shone in upon her benighted soul.

“Lost, saidst thou, accursed fiend?—­Never until his power shall yield to thine!”

Yet she shuddered, as though the appalling shadow were still upon her spirit.—­“Nay, ’twas but a dream.”

“Dreams!” cried Lord William, recovering from a look of speechless amazement.  “Thy dreams are more akin to truth than ever were thy waking reveries.”

“Nay, my Lord, look not so unkindly on me—­I will tell thee all.  I dreamt that I was possessed, and this body was the dwelling of a demon.  It was permitted as a punishment for my transgressions; for I had sought communion with the fiend.  I was the companion of witches—­foul and abominable shapes;—­a beastly crew, with whom I was doomed to associate.  Hellish rites and deeds, too horrible to name, were perpetrated.  As a witness of my degradation, methought my right hand was withered.  I feel it still!  Yet—­surely ’twas a dream!”

She raised her hand, gazing earnestly on it, which, to Lord William’s amazement, appeared whole as before, save a slight mark round the wrist, but the ring was not there.

“What can this betide?” said the trembling sufferer.  She looked suspiciously on this apparent confirmation of her guilt, and then upon her husband.  “Oh, tell me that I did but dream!”

But Lord William spoke not.

“I know it all now!” she said, with a heavy sob.  “My crime is punished; and I loathe my own form, for it is polluted.  Yet the whole has passed but as some horrible dream—­and I am free!  This tabernacle is cleansed; no more shall it be defiled; for to Thee do I render up my trust.”

A mild radiance had displaced the wild and unnatural lustre of her eye, as she looked up to the mercy she invoked, and was forgiven.

Her spirit was permitted but a brief sojourn in this region of sorrow.  Ere another sun, her head hung lifeless on Lord William’s bosom;—­he had pressed her to his heart in token of forgiveness; but he held only the cold and clammy shrine—­the idol had departed!