"The invalid was lying on the outside of the bed partly dressed, and wearing a white dimity wrapping-gown, the colour of which corresponded but too well with the deadly paleness of her complexion. Her cheek was wan and sunken, giving an extraordinary prominence to her eye, which gleamed with a lustrous brilliancy not unfrequently characteristic of the aberration of intellect. I took her hand; it was chill and clammy, the pulse feeble and intermittent, and the general debility of her frame was such that I would fain have persuaded her to defer any conversation which, in her present state, she might not be equal to support. Her positive assurance that until she had disburdened herself of what she called her 'dreadful secret,' she could know no rest either of mind or body, at length induced me to comply with her wish, opposition to which in her then frame of mind might perhaps be attended with even worse effects than its indulgence. I bowed acquiescence, and in a low and faltering voice, with frequent interruptions occasioned by her weakness, she gave me the following singular account of the sensations which, she averred, had been experienced by her during her trance:-- "'This, sir,' she began, 'is not the first time that the cruelty of others has, for what purpose I am unable to conjecture, put me to a degree of torture which I can compare to no suffering, either of body or mind, which I have ever before experienced. On a former occasion I was willing to believe it the mere effect of a hideous dream, or what is vulgarly termed the nightmare; but this repetition, and the circumstances under which I was last _summoned_, at a time, too, when I had not even composed myself to rest, fatally convince me of the reality of what I have seen and suffered.