The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [275]
“How long I slept or what happened while I did, I cannot know. I remember that I awoke in a circular chamber, sumptuously furnished. Light penetrated only through an opening in the ceiling. Stranger still, no door gave entrance to the room which might be well described as a magnificent prison.
“It took me a long time to establish what kind of place I was in and to make out the details I have just described to you. My mind struggled vainly to shake off the heavy pall of the sleep that had possessed me. Blurred intimations of something that must have happened to me seeped eerily through my dulled senses: the rumbling of a coach . . . a long long drive . . . a terrible dream in which my strength was exhausted. . . . But these perceptions were so shadowy and so indistinct in my mind that they seemed to have happened to some other woman in some other existence, yet were somehow linked with me and my life by some fantastic duality.
“For a long time, I assured myself, I must be dreaming. I arose tottering. My clothes were near me on a chair, yet I could not remember having undressed or gone to bed. Then, very slowly, the truth began to dawn upon me with all the horror it held to a chaste girl. I was no longer at home . . . in so far as I could judge by the sunlight, the day was already two-thirds spent . . . it was the evening before that I fell asleep . . . my slumber must have lasted twenty-four hours. . . . But what had occurred during this long coma?
“I dressed as quickly as I could, each slow and benumbed movement of mine proving to me that the effect of the narcotic had not yet worn off. I realized grimly that the room I occupied had obviously been furnished to receive a woman; the most finished coquette could not have asked for anything that was not ready at hand. Certainly I was not the first woman to be held captive in this splendid prison; but you can understand, Felton, the handsomer the prison, the greater my terror.
“Luxurious though the chamber was, it was a prison nevertheless. I essayed in vain to get out. I sounded all the walls, seeking to discover a door; everywhere only a dull, flat thud replied to my beating fists. I made the rounds of the room a score of times at least, hoping against hope to find some exit. As last, baffled, I fell into a chair, crushed by fright and fatigue.
“Meanwhile night was fast falling and, with night, my terrors increased. What was I to do? Should I sit still where I was? What else could I do? I sensed I was beset with all manner of unknown dangers; any step I took might cast me into them. Though I had eaten nothing since the day before, my fears prevented me from feeling hungry.
“No noise reached me from the outside or I might have measured the passage of time. I could only guess that it was probably now seven or eight o’clock in the evening, for it was in October all this happened and everything was quite dark.
“Suddenly the creaking of a door turning on its hinges made me start. A globe of fire appeared above the glazed opening in the ceiling. By the brilliant light it cast into my chamber, I perceived with dismay that a man loomed up within a few steps of me. A table set for two, bearing a supper ready to serve, stood as if by magic in the middle of the apartment.
“Alas it was the man who had pursued me for a whole year . . . who had sworn my dishonor . . . and who, by the first words he uttered, gave me to understand that he had accomplished it the previous