"Has she been long thus?" he asked, in a low voice.
"Since last night," replied the woman--no other than Mr. Dyceworthy's
former servant, Ulrika. "She wakened suddenly, and bade me send for you.
To-day she has not spoken."
The _bonde_ sighed somewhat impatiently. He approached the now blazing
pine-logs, and as he drew off his thick fur driving-gloves, and warmed
his hands at the cheerful blaze, Ulrika again fixed her dull eyes upon
him with something of wonder and reluctant admiration. Presently she
trimmed an oil-lamp, and set it, burning dimly, on the table. Then she
went to the bed and bent over it,--after a pause of several minutes, she
turned and made a beckoning sign with her finger. Gueldmar advanced a
little,--when a sudden eldritch shriek startled him back, almost
curdling the blood in his veins. Out of the deep obscurity, like some
gaunt spectre rising from the tomb, started a face, wrinkled,
cadaverous, and distorted by suffering,--a face in which the fierce,
fevered eyes glittered with a strange and dreadful brilliancy--the face
of Lovisa Elsland, stern, forbidding, and already dark with the shadows
of approaching death.
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