Looking down upon her from the top of the little turret, Alec saw that
she was ill, and returning instantly in great dismay, comforted her as
well as he could, and got her by degrees to the bottom. There was a
spot of grass inside the walls, on which he made her rest; and as the
sun shone upon her through one of the ruined windows, he stood so that
his shadow should fall across her eyes. While he stood thus a strange
fancy seized him. The sun became in his eyes a fiery dragon, which
having devoured half of the building, having eaten the inside out of
it, having torn and gnawed it everywhere, and having at length reached
its kernel, the sleeping beauty, whose bed had, in the long years,
mouldered away, and been replaced by the living grass, would swallow
her up anon, if he were not there to stand between and defend her. When
he looked at her next, she had indeed become the sleeping beauty he had
fancied her; and sleep had already restored the colour to her cheeks.
Turning his eyes up to the tower from which they had just descended, he
saw, looking down upon them from one of the isolated doorways, the pale
face of Patrick Beauchamp. Alec bounded to the stair, rushed to the top
and round the platform, but found nobody.
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