she had filled was empty. I was so much
bewildered, and out of myself as it were, that for
a while I could neither think of anything, nor
hear anything, but the mad heavy throbbing of
my own pulses. I cannot say that I was
scared exactly; for the time I was completely
rapt away; the first actual sensation I had
was of my own heart thumping in my breast
like a sledge-hammer.

But I can call her up now and analyse her—a
wan, vague, misty outline, with Honor's own
eyes full upon me. I can almost fancy I hear
her asking again, "Is it true you're going,
James? You're not really going, James?"

Now, I am not the man to be frightened by a
shadow, though that shadow be Honor Livingston,
whom they say I as good as murdered. I
always had a turn for investigating riddles,
spiritual, physiological, and otherwise; and I
shall follow this mystery up, and note whether
she comes back to me year by year, as she
promised. I have never kept a diary of personal
matters before, not being one who cares to see
spectres of himself, at remote periods of his life,
talking to him again of his adventures and
misadventures out of yellow old pages that had
better never have been written; but this is a
marked event worth commemorating, and a well-
authenticated ghost-story to me who never
believed in ghosts before.

It was a rather spiteful threat of Honor—
"I'll haunt you till you come to the Ashenfall,
where I'm going now!" I might have stopped
her, but it never entered my mind what she
meant, until it was done. I did not expect she
would make a tragedy of a little love story; she
did not look like that sort of thing. She was
no ghost, bless her! in the flesh, but as round,
rosy, dimpled a little creature as one would wish
to see; and what could possess her to throw
herself over the fall, Heaven only knows.—
Bah! Yes, / know; I need tell no lies here, I
need not do any false swearing to myself—
the poor little creature loved me, and I wanted
her to love me, and I petted and plagued
her into loving me, because I was idle, and I
had the opportunity; and then I had nothing
better to tell her than that I was only in jest—
I could not marry her, for I was engaged to
another woman. She would not believe it.
That sounded, to her, more like jest than the
other. And she did not believe it until she saw
me making ready to go; and then, all in a
moment, I suppose, madness seized her, and she
neither knew where she went, nor what she
did.

I fancy I can see her now, coming tripping
down the fields leading her little brother by the
hand, and I fancy I can see the saucy laugh she
gave me over her shoulder as I asked her if she
had any ripe cherries to sell. She looked the very
mischief with those pretty eyes, and I was taken
rather aback when she said, "I know you, Jemmy
Lawrence." That was the beginning of it.
Little Honor and her mother lived next door to
mine, and she had not forgotten me though I
had been full seven years away. I did not
know her, the gipsy, but I must needs go in
and see her that evening; and so we went on
until I asked her if she remembered when we
went to dame-school together and when she
promised to be my little wife? If she remembered!
Of course she did, every word of it, and more; and
she was so pretty, and the lanes in the summer
were so pleasant, that sometimes my fancy did
play Anne Dalton false, and I believed I should
like Honor better; and I said more than I
meant, and she took it all in the grand serious
manner.

I was not much to blame. I would not have
injured her for the world; she was as good a
little soul as ever lived. Love and jealousy, as
passions, seem to find their strongholds under
thatch. If Phillis, the milkmaid, is disappointed,
she drowns herself in the mill-pool; if
Lady Clara gets a cross of the heart, she indites
a lachrymose sonnet, and marries a gouty peer.
If Colin's sweetheart smiles on Lubin, Colin
loads his gun and shoots them both; if Sir
Harry's fair flouts him, he whistles her down the
wind, and goes a-wooing elsewhere. Had little
Honor been a fine lady, she would be living
still. Oh, the pretty demure lips, and the shy
glances and rosy blushes! When I saw Anne
Dalton to-day I could not help comparing her
frigid gentility with poor Honor. Anne loves
herself better than she will ever love any man
alive. But then I know she is the kind of wife
to help a man up in the world, and that is the
kind of wife for me.

Honor Livingston lying on her little bed, and
her blind mother feeling her cold dead face! I
wish I had never seen it. I would have given
the world to keep away, but something
compelled me to go in and look at her; and I did
feel then, as it I had killed her. Last night she
was a shadowy essence of this drowned Ophelia
and of her living self. She was like, yet unlike;
but I knew it was Honor; and I suppose, if she
has her will, wherever her restless spirit may be
condemned to bide between whiles—on the tenth
of August she will always come back to me, and
haunt me until I go to her.

Hastings, August 11,1830.

Again! I had forgotten the day—forgotten
everything about that wretched business of poor
Honor Livingston, when last night I saw her.

Anne and I were sitting together out in the
verandah, talking of all sorts of common-place
things—our neighbours' affairs, money, this,
that, and the other—the sea was looking beautiful,
and I was on the point of proposing a
row by moonlight, when Anne said, "How
lovely the evenings are, James, in this place.
Look at the sky over the down, how clear it is!"
Turning my head, I saw Honor standing on
the grass only a few paces off, her shadowy
shape quite distinct against the reds and purples
of the clouds.

Anne clutched my hand with a sudden cry,
for she was looking at my face all the time, and
asked me, passionately, what I saw. With that,
Honor was gone, and, passing my hand over my