They were relieved by two others, changing through the night.

She heard them come and go, but did not turn her head.
When the dawn forelightened, like the ghost of a buried day risen from the grave to see its past deeds, she was not yet dead.

She had once read how the murderers of Vittoria Accoramboni had been torn with red-hot pincers and otherwise grievously tortured, and how knives had been thrust deep into their breasts just where the heart was not, but near it, and how they had died hard, for they had lived more than half an hour with the knives in them, and at the last had been quartered alive.
She had not believed what she had read, but now she knew that it was true.

She envied them the searing, the tearing, and the knives which had at last killed them, though they had died so hard.
The wan dawn turned the dead man's face from waxen yellow to stone grey.
The servants saw it, whispered, and closed the inner shutters, and the yellow candle-light shone again in the room.

Any light is better than daylight on a dead face.
Matilde sat still, bowed and covered.