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There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it I paused to think what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.... It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down but with a shudder even more thrilling than before upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows."
By contrast with the treacherous Tresten, whose iciness roused her to defiance, the nervous little advocate seemed an emissary of the skies, and she invoked her treasure-stores of the craven's craftiness in revolt to compose a letter that should move him, melt the good angel to espouse her cause.
But remember this: I'll never, never, never marry him. Rather than be bound to him I'll deal with him myself." "It won't be necessary, madam," said I a catch in my throat; for while I was all iciness and clamminess, my hands cold and my tongue dry, I felt that I was going to kill him at last. Something told me; the sheer horror of it struck through; the inevitable loomed grisly and near indeed.
The flesh of his face seemed to swell in puffs, his nostrils widened, his eyes seemed to recede beneath the fleshy brows. He held up his great hairy hands, closing and opening them; but enough reason remained in his rage-drunken mind to comprehend the iciness of the blue eyes above the rifle barrel.
"I will slip away now," she said, for strangely enough since Percy's message had been in Armand's hands she was once again conscious of that awful feeling of iciness round her heart, a sense of numbness that paralysed her very thoughts. "You will make my excuses to Mademoiselle Lange," she said, trying to smile. "When you have read, you will wish to see her alone."
As she said this, Gwen slipped her warm hand between the sheets, and touched the motionless extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone bottle of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and laying stress upon its iciness.
Then she said "Oh!" in a surprised voice, because Francis was standing before it, brushing his hair much harder than such straight black hair needed to be brushed. He seemed as much surprised as she. "Good heavens, I beg your pardon, Marjorie!" he said. "This isn't your room. Yours is the next one." "I beg your pardon, then," said Marjorie, with a certain iciness.
The morning light, as though lured from all other objects in the room by this motionless, fine figure, accentuated her appearance of iciness. She spoke, too, in the voice of a stranger, in accents that thrilled with a force produced incongruously from so emaciated a body. "Come closer. I want to look at you."
It was all very vivid as the oxen bellowed softly now, and Bob whispered into my ear, his breath feeling quite hot after the chilling iciness of the night wind. "Cheer up, old Val," he said; "they won't dare to shoot you. I shall be there, and if they attempt it, and that Irishman gives the order you know how true I can aim? I'll send a bullet right through his head, if father isn't first."
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