and exclaiming, "I shall cheat the lady yet!"

During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
"Ah, Richard is himself again!" But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.

As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, "to
deceive him into comfort."

Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
to go--half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve--and nothing
happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
laughter--discordant, jubilant, defiant.