Have you the heart? When your head did but ache, _I knit my handkerchief about your brows_, And with my hand at midnight held your head; And, like the watchful minutes to the hour. Still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time.
If the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound one unto the drowsy race of night; If this same were a church-yard where we stand, And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs; Or if that surly spirit Melancholy Had baked thy blood and made it heavy, thick; Then, in despite of broad-eyed watchful day, I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts.
Meanwhile the persecuted Adeline continued to travel, with little interruption, all night. Her mind suffered such a tumult of grief, regret, despair, and terror, that she could not be said to think. The Marquis's valet, who had placed himself in the chaise with her, at first seemed inclined to talk; but her inattention soon silenced him, and left her to the indulgence of her own misery.
They seemed to travel through obscure lanes and by-ways, along which the carriage drove as furiously as the darkness would permit. When the dawn appeared, she perceived herself on the borders of a forest, and renewed her entreaties to know whither she was going. The man replied he had no orders to tell, but she would soon see. Adeline, who had hitherto supposed they were carrying her to the villa, now began to doubt it; and as every place appeared less terrible to her imagination than that, her despair began to abate, and she thought only of the devoted Theodore, whom she knew to be the victim of malice and revenge.
They now entered upon the forest, and it occurred to her that she was going to the abbey; for though she had no remembrance of the scenery through which she passed, it was not the less probable that this was the forest of Fontanville, whose boundaries were by much too extensive to have come within the circle of her former walks. This conjecture revived a terror little inferior to that occasioned by the idea of going to the villa; for at the abbey she would be equally in the power of the Marquis, and also in that of her cruel enemy La Motte. Her mind revolted at the picture her fancy drew; and as the carriage moved under the shades, she threw from the window a look of eager inquiry for some object which might confirm or destroy her present surmise: she did not long look, before an opening in the forest showed her the distant towers of the abbey--I am, indeed, lost then, said she, bursting into tears.