had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but now every blast seemed fraught with awful intelligence.
The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was
it to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate? By what means could it have
been so long concealed? And how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she
had made herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with
the sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many were the tedious hours which must yet
intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. The storm still
raged, and various were the noises, more terrific even than the wind, which struck at intervals on her
startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seemed at one moment in motion, and at another the lock
of her door was agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody to enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep
along the gallery, and more than once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. Hour after
hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house
before the tempest subsided or she unknowingly fell fast asleep.