Suddenly a piercing chill darted through his frame, and he fell in strong convulsions upon the ground, in the midst of the same wood where his transformation had taken place on the preceding evening. The sun rose angrily, imparting a lurid, reddened hue to the dark clouds that hung upon the Oriental heaven, as if the mantling curtains of a night's pavilion strove to repel the wooing kisses of the morn; and the cold chill breeze made the branches swing to and fro with ominous flapping, like the wings of the fabulous Simoorg. But in the midst of the appalling spasmodic convulsions, with direful writhings on the soil, and with cries of bitter anguish, the Wehr-Wolf gradually threw off his monster-shape; and at the very moment when the first sunbeam penetrated the wood and glinted on his face he rose a handsome, young, and perfect man once more! CHAPTER XIII. NISIDA'S EMOTIONS--THE DISGUISE--THE PLOT. We must now return to Nisida, whom we left gazing from the window of the Riverola mansion, at the moment when Wagner rushed away from the vicinity of his lady-love on the approach of sunset. The singularity of his conduct--the look of ineffable horror and anguish which he cast upon her, ere he parted from her presence--and the abruptness of his departure, filled her mind with the most torturing misgivings, and with a thousand wild fears. Had his senses suddenly left him? was he the prey to fits of mental aberration which would produce so extraordinary an effect upon him? had he taken a sudden loathing and disgust to herself? or had he _discovered_ anything in respect to her which had converted his love into hatred? She knew not--and conjecture was vain! To a woman of her excitable temperament, the occurrence was particularly painful. She had never known the passion of love until she had seen Wagner; and the moment she did see him, she loved him. The sentiment on her part originated altogether in the natural sensuality of her disposition; there was nothing pure--nothing holy--nothing refined in her affection for him; it was his wonderful personal beauty that had made so immediate and profound an impression upon her heart. There was consequently something furious and raging in that passion which she experienced for Fernand Wagner--a passion capable of every extreme--the largest sacrifices, or infuriate jealousies--the most implicit confidence, or the maddest suspicion! It was a passion which would induce her to ascend the scaffold to save him; or to plunge the vengeful dagger into his heart did she fancy that he deceived her! To one, then, whose soul was animated by such a love, the conduct of Fernand was well adapted to wear even an exaggerated appearance of singularity; and as each different conjecture swept through her imagination, her emotions were excited to an extent which caused her countenance to vary its expressions a hundred times in a minute.