Beadle's Dime Novels No. 14 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 THE EMERALD NECKLACE. mother !” knocking at her door, “I wish you would let me get into bed with you.” Penhon hobbled back and flung himself down on the bed to laugh. ‘The idea of a youth of twenty-two still fleeing to his mother’s side for refuge from apprehended danger, was very ludicrous to him. He was almost malicious enough to wish that Clematis might have—— “ Clematis ! what of her?” He paused in his laughter, and asked himself this question: “ Something has happened to her, I know. I wish that I - dared to go to her chamber-door and ask, or that I knew where her parents slept that I might ask them to go.” Just then his door unclosed and she came in, gliding slow- ly, and pale as a ghost. He had left his lamp burning to dim the glare of the lightning, and he saw her distinctly. She had not undressed. She was just as she was when he saw her last, except that the necklace was gone from her neck, and* her curls were partially put up in a comb. He arose and spoke to her gently, for he conceived that she was greatly frightened. . She made no reply, but stood close by him, look- ing at him with a steady but meaningless gaze. He thought she might have a habit of walking in her sleep, and touched her hand to arouse her. She shuddered from head to foot at his touch, but gave no other sign of consciousness. Now thoroughly alarmed, he aroused the household. Her parents were distressed and half out of their senses at her condition. They said she had no habit. of a somnambulist. She was taken and laid upon the bed in her own room, her -temples and hands chafed, and every endeavor made to re- store her to animation, for she seemed to be in a strange sort of a fit. She gave no signs of recovery, except that once or twice when Pennon chanced to touch her the same shudder went through her frame, and he grew afraid to approach her for fear of increasing her suffering, if she suffered. ~- “J believe that it is the effect of fright,” said Mr. Percy as he sat by her bedside and+gazed upon her in anguish. «“ Will not some one go for a physician ?” sobbed his wife, “JT would that I knew the way, or that my foot was well,” answered Pennon; “but I will go, if I have to creep on my knees, if you will tell me where.” comlclbooks.com