Page:A Series of Plays on the Passions Volume 3.pdf/61

Such stories ever change her cheerful spirits
To gloomy pensiveness; her rosy bloom
To the wan colour of a shrouded corse.
(To Orra.) What pleasure is there, Lady, when thy hand,
Cold as the valley's ice, with hasty grasp
Seizes on her who speaks, while thy shrunk form
Cow'ring and shiv'ring stands with keen turn'd ear
To catch what follows of the pausing tale?

Or. And let me cow'ring stand, and be my touch
The valley's ice: there is a pleasure in it.

Al. Say'st thou indeed there is a pleasure in it?

Or. Yea, when the cold blood shoots through every vein:
When every hair's-pit on my shrunken skin
A knotted knoll becomes, and to mine ears
Strange inward sounds awake, and to mine eyes
Rush stranger tears, there is a joy in fear.
(Catching hold of Cathrina.)
Tell it, Cathrina, for the life within me
Beats thick, and stirs to hear it.
He slew the hunter-knight?

Cath. Since I must tell it, then, the story goes
That grim Count Aldenbergh, the ancestor
Of Hughobert, and also of yourself,
From hatred or from envy, to his castle
A noble knight, who hunted in the forest,
Well the Black Forest named, basely decoyed,
And there, within his chamber, murder'd him—