“The entertainment was to be a masked ball; and Isidora, who imagined that this might suggest to Melmoth some auspicious expedient for her escape, watched in vain for some hint of hope,--some allusion to the probability of this event facilitating her extrication from those snares of death that seemed compassing her about. He never uttered a word, and her dependence on him was at one moment confirmed, at another shaken to its foundation, by this terrible silence. In one of these latter moments, the anguish of which was increased beyond expression by a conviction that her hour of danger was not far distant, she exclaimed to Melmoth--“Take me--take me from this place! My existence is nothing--it is a vapour that soon must be exhaled--but my reason is threatened every moment! I cannot sustain the horrors to which I am exposed! All this day I have been dragged through rooms decorated for my impossible nuptials!--Oh, Melmoth, if you no longer love me, at least commiserate me! Save me from a situation of horror unspeakable!--have mercy on your child, if not on me! I have hung on your looks,--I have watched for a word of hope--you have not uttered a sound--you have not cast a glance of hope on me! I am wild!--I am reckless of all but the imminent and _present_ horrors of to-morrow--you have talked of your power to approach, to enter these walls without suspicion or discovery--you boasted of that cloud of mystery in which you could envelope yourself. Oh! in this last moment of my extremity, wrap me in its tremendous folds, and let me escape in them, though they prove my shroud!--Think of the terrible night of our marriage! I followed you then in fear and confidence--your touch dissolved every earthly barrier--your steps trod an unknown path, yet I followed you!--Oh! If you really possess that mysterious and inscrutable power, which I dare not either question or believe, exert it for me in this terrible emergency--aid my escape--and though I feel I shall never live to thank you, the _silent suppliant_ will remind you by its smiles of the tears that I now shed; and if they are shed in vain, its smile will have a bitter eloquence as it plays with the flowers on its mother’s grave!”