The Count of Monte Cristo

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controlling her ideas, was forced to yield to the excitement which
exhausted itself in producing and reproducing a succession and
recurrence of the same fancies and images. The night-lamp threw out
countless rays, each resolving itself into some strange form to her
disordered imagination, when suddenly by its flickering light Valentine
thought she saw the door of her library, which was in the recess by the
chimney-piece, open slowly, though she in vain listened for the sound of
the hinges on which it turned.

At any other time Valentine would have seized the silken bell-pull
and summoned assistance, but nothing astonished her in her present
situation. Her reason told her that all the visions she beheld were but
the children of her imagination, and the conviction was strengthened
by the fact that in the morning no traces remained of the nocturnal
phantoms, who disappeared with the coming of daylight. From behind the
door a human figure appeared, but the girl was too familiar with
such apparitions to be alarmed, and therefore only stared, hoping to