It is possible that, with something of the terrors of a guilty conscience herself, the poor waiting woman at first imagines that the queen has been listening and caught her plotting with the doctor, for the second exclamation shows an otherwise unaccountable surprise at her being asleep; This is her very guise, and, _upon my life, fast asleep_: observe her: stand close. _Doctor._ How came she by that light? _Gent._ Why it stood by her. _She has a light by her continually_: ’tis _her command_! Observe the short sentences—as of people listening—watching—under the pressure of a powerful motive and interest. The light—the doctor’s surprise at seeing her carry it about with her, and the reply. “_She has a light by her continually. ’Tis her command._” This is a new and fearful discovery of the internal state of the wretched woman’s mind. Here we have at once a view of her night-terrors, the guilty phantoms which throng her bedside. It is as if a lurid gleam had been suddenly cast upon her soul from the half-opened gates of hell itself. _Doct._ You see her eyes are open. This is so remarkable a feature in a somnambulist that, even when aware of it, we can scarcely—while looking on a countenance from which stare two wide-gazing eyes—realize that they take no note of present objects, but are bent only on the immaterial, supernatural world. The gentlewoman who has so often seen her thus replies (at this moment more cool than the doctor): _Gent._ Ay, but their sense is shut. _Doct._ What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands. _Gent._ It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue this a quarter of an hour. _Lady._ Yet here’s a spot! It is not possible to call up a more harrowing type of guilt than that furnished by this bloody queen, thus haunted by the idea of what she has done, still the ordinary processes of nature themselves are interrupted, and she is driven to this species of insanity. It is the more striking in _her_, from the contrast it affords with her supposed callousness of character, and the haughty, masculine, I had almost said fiendish scorn of all those phantoms of guilt which her more human husband saw in advance. This is the proud and cruel mind which feared Macbeth’s _softer nature_ could never be worked up to the commission of the deed necessary to seat them on the throne: yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full of the milk of human kindness, To catch the nearest way: Thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition; but without The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly Thou wouldst holily: wouldst not play false, And yet wouldst wrongly win, etc. etc.