On awakening from her terrible dream, the first object that presented itself to her was the fixed gaze of that terrific eye.  It was now wrought up to such a concentration of malignity as surpassed all that even her imagination had ever formed of it.  Fixed—­diabolical in its aspect, and steady as fate itself—­it poured upon the weak and alarmed girl such a flood of venomous and prostrating influence that her shrieks were too feeble to reach the house when calling for assistance.  She seemed to have been fascinated to her own destruction.  There the eye was fastened upon her, and she felt herself deprived of the power of removing her own from his.

“O my God!” she exclaimed, “I am lost—­help, help; the murderous eye is upon me!”

“It is enough,” said Woodward; “good by, Miss Goodwin.  I was simply contemplating your beauty, and I am sorry to see that you are in so weak a state.  Present my compliments to your father and mother; and I think of me as a man whose affection you have indignantly spurned—­a man, however, I whose eye, whatever his heart may be, is not to be trifled with.”

He then made her a low bow, and took his departure back through the garden.

“It is over,” said he; “finitum est, the property is mine; she cannot be saved now; I have taken her life; but no one can say that I have shed her blood.  My precious mother will be delighted to hear this.  Now, we will be free to act with old Cockletown and his niece; and if she does not turn out a good wife—­if she crosses me in my amours—–­for amours I will have,—­I shall let her, too, feel what my eye can do.”

Alice’s screams, after his departure from the garden, brought out Sarah Sullivan, who, aided by another servant, assisted her between them to reach the house, where she was put to bed in such a state of weakness, alarm, and terror as cannot be described.  Her father and mother were immediately sent for, and, on arriving at her bedside, found her apparently in a dying state.  All she could find voice to utter was,—­

“He was here—­his eye was upon me in the summer house.  I feel I am dying.”

Doctor Doolittle and Father Mulrenin were both sent for, but she had fallen into an exhausted slumber, and it was deemed better not to disturb her until she might gain some strength by sleep.  Her parents, who felt so anxious about her health, and the faint hopes of her recovery, now made fainter by the incident which had just occurred, did not return to the assembly, and the consequence was that Woodward and they did not meet.

When the hour for the dance, however, arrived, the tables for refreshments were placed in other and smaller rooms, and the larger one in which they had dined was cleared out for the ball.  The simple-hearted Pythagorean had slept himself sober, without being aware of the cause of his break-down at the dinner, and he now appeared among them in a gala dress of snow-white linen.  He was no enemy to healthy amusements,