about the defences detained Caspar far beyond his usual hour for
retiring, and the sultriness of the weather having caused him a
headache, he represented to himself that, with mistress Dorothy
tending the engine, who knew where and would be sure to find him
upon the least occasion, there could be no harm in his going to bed
without paying his usual precautionary visit to the keep.

So Dorothy sat, and waited in vain. The last drops of the day
trickled down the side of the world, the night filled the crystal
globe from its bottom of rock to its cover of blue aether, and the
red glow of the furnace was all that lighted the place. She waited
and waited in her mind; but Caspar did not come. She began to feel
miserable. The furnace fire sank, and the rush of the water grew
slower and slower, and ceased. Caspar did not come. The fire sank
lower and lower, its red eye dimmed, darkened, went out. Still
Caspar did not come. Faint fears began to gather about poor
Dorothy's heart. It was clear at last that there she must be all the
night long, and who could tell how far into the morning? It was good
the night was warm, but it would be very dreary. And then to be
fixed in one position for so long! The thought of it grew in misery
faster than the thing itself. The greater torment lies always in the
foreboding. She felt almost as if she were buried alive. Having
their hands tied even, is enough to drive strong men almost crazy.
Nor, firm of heart as she was, did no evils of a more undefined and
less resistible character claim a share in her fast-rising
apprehensions; she began to discover that she too was assailable by
the terror of the night, although she had not hitherto been aware of
it, no one knowing what may lie unhatched in his mind, waiting the
concurrence of vital conditions.