`` My throat ! My throat is scorched , '' murmured the voice . `` A drop of water ! '' `` What thing art thou ? '' said the brain-stricken youth , drawing near the bed and tearing asunder its curtains . `` Whose voice hast thou stolen for thy murmurs and miserable petitions , as if Lady Eleanore could be conscious of mortal infirmity ? Fie ! Heap of diseased mortality , why lurkest thou in my lady 's chamber ? '' `` Oh , Jervase Helwyse , '' said the voice -- and as it spoke the figure contorted itself , struggling to hide its blasted face -- `` look not now on the woman you once loved . The curse of Heaven hath stricken me because I would not call man my brother nor woman sister . I wrapped myself in pride as in a mantle and scorned the sympathies of nature , and therefore has Nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful sympathy . You are avenged , they are all avenged , Nature is avenged ; for I am Eleanore Rochcliffe . '' The malice of his mental disease , the bitterness lurking at the bottom of his heart , mad as he was , for a blighted and ruined life and love that had been paid with cruel scorn , awoke within the breast of Jervase Helwyse . He shook his finger at the wretched girl , and the chamber echoed , the curtains of the bed were shaken , with his outburst of insane merriment . `` Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore ! '' he cried . `` All have been her victims ; who so worthy to be the final victim as herself ? '' Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intellect , he snatched the fatal mantle and rushed from the chamber and the house . That night a procession passed by torchlight through the streets , bearing in the midst the figure of a woman enveloped with a richly-embroidered mantle , while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse waving the red flag of the pestilence . Arriving opposite the province-house , the mob burned the effigy , and a strong wind came and swept away the ashes .
It was said that from that very hour the XXXXX abated , as if its sway had some mysterious connection , from the first plague-stroke to the last , with Lady Elcanore 's mantle .
Eleanore Fie Helwyse Rochcliffe disease murmurs night pestilence province-house torchlight