"Help, help!" she cried. "Gracious Heavens! Where am I?"
Varney spoke not, but he spread out his long, thin arms in such a manner that he seemed almost to encircle her, while he touched her not, so that escape became a matter of impossibility, and to attempt to do so, must have been to have thrown herself into his hideous embrace.
She could obtain but a single view of the face and figure of him who opposed her progress, but, slight as that view was, it more than sufficed. The very extremity of fear came across her, and she sat like one paralysed; the only evidence of existence she gave consisting in the words,--
"The vampyre--the vampyre!"
"Yes," said Varney, "the vampyre. You know me, Flora Bannerworth--Varney, the vampyre; your midnight guest at that feast of blood. I am the vampyre. Look upon me well; shrink not from my gaze. You will do well not to shun me, but to speak to me in such a shape that I may learn to love you."
Flora shook as in a convulsion, and she looked as white as any marble statue.
"This is horrible!" she said. "Why does not Heaven grant me the death I pray for?"
"Hold!" said Varney. "Dress not up in the false colours of the imagination that which in itself is sufficiently terrific to need none of the allurements of romance. Flora Bannerworth, you are persecuted--persecuted by me, the vampyre. It is my fate to persecute you; for there are laws to the invisible as well as the visible creation that force even such a being as I am to play my part in the great drama of existence. I am a vampyre; the sustenance that supports this frame must be drawn from the life-blood of others."
"Oh, horror--horror!"
"But most I do affect the young and beautiful. It is from the veins of such as thou art, Flora Bannerworth, that I would seek the sustenance I'm compelled to obtain for my own exhausted energies. But never yet, in all my long career--a career extending over centuries of time--never yet have I felt the soft sensation of human pity till I looked on thee, exquisite piece of excellence. Even at the moment when the reviving fluid from the gushing fountain of your veins was warming at my heart, I pitied and I loved you. Oh, Flora! even I can now feel the pang of being what I am!"
There was a something in the tone, a touch of sadness in the manner, and a deep sincerity in these words, that in some measure disabused Flora of her fears. She sobbed hysterically, and a gush of tears came to her relief, as, in almost inarticulate accents, she said,--
"May the great God forgive even you!"
"I have need of such a prayer," exclaimed Varney--"Heaven knows I have need of such a prayer. May it ascend on the wings of the night air to the throne of Heaven. May it be softly whispered by ministering angels to the ear of Divinity. God knows I have need of such a prayer!"
"To hear you speak in such a strain," said Flora, "calms the excited fancy, and strips even your horrible presence of some of its maddening influence."
"Hush," said the vampire, "you must hear more--you must know more ere you speak of the matters that have of late exercised an influence of terror over you."
"But how came I here?" said Flora, "tell me that. By what more than earthly power have you brought me to this spot? If I am to listen to you, why should it not be at some more likely time and place?"
"I have powers," said Varney, assuming from Flora's words, that she would believe such arrogance--"I have powers which suffice to bend many purposes to my will--powers incidental to my position, and therefore is it I have brought you here to listen to that which should make you happier than you are."
"I will attend," said Flora. "I do not shudder now; there's an icy coldness through my veins, but it is the night air--speak, I will attend you."
"I will. Flora Bannerworth, I am one who has witnessed time's mutations on man and on his works, and I have pitied neither; I have seen the fall of empires, and sighed not that high reaching ambition was toppled to the dust. I have seen the grave close over the young and the beautiful--those whom I have doomed by my insatiable thirst for human blood to death, long ere the usual span of life was past, but I never loved till now."
"Can such a being as you," said Flora "be susceptible of such an earthly passion?"
"And wherefore not?"
"Love is either too much of heaven, or too much of earth to find a home with thee."
"No, Flora, no! it may be that the feeling is born of pity. I will save you--I will save you from a continuance of the horrors that are assailing you."