"Nor I, I am sure (said Floretta) if you could, or would give me a principality for doing so."
"I will then (cried Madeline, ashamed to propose what she would shrink from herself), I will go and endeavour to discover the occasion of the noise."
She went softly into the Countess's chamber, to try if she was disturbed by it, and finding her still asleep, she took up a light, and descended (though with trembling limbs, and a palpitating heart) to the great hall, from whence the noise had sounded. The light she held but partially dispersed its awful gloom, and her tremor and palpitation increased, as she proceeded to the extreme end, at which hung the ominous armour. She found this in its usual situation, and she was hastily moving from it, too much depressed and agitated to think of searching elsewhere for the cause of the noise, when a door opposite to her (which led to a suit of rooms that had been appropriated solely to the use of the Count, and since his death,
