These books were not the
books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and
untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt -
Well, there is no use adding to the picture. Every one knows the
spirit of sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut
up for an indefinite length of time from air and sunshine.
The elegance of the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of
the finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the
richness of the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble
rising above the accursed hearthstone, only served to make more
evident the extreme neglect into which the rest of the room had sunk.
Being anything but anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy
influence and quite convinced that the place was indeed as empty as
it looked, I turned to leave, when my eyes fell upon something so
unexpected and so extraordinary, seen as it was under the influence
of the old tragedies with which my mind was necessarily full, that
I paused, balked in my advance, and well-nigh uncertain whether I
looked upon a real thing or on some strange and terrible fantasy of
my aroused imagination.
A form lay before me, outstretched on that portion of the floor
which had hitherto been hidden from me by the half-open door - a
woman's form, which even in that first casual look impressed itself
upon me as one of aerial delicacy and extreme refinement; and this
form lay as only the dead lie; the dead! And I had been looking at
the hearthstone for just such a picture! No, not just such a
picture, for this woman lay face uppermost, and, on the floor beside
her was blood.
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