was not in the least frightened or disturbed;
it all seemed natural and familiar. I placed
the candle on a table in the midst of the room,
where an old broken mirror stood; and, looking
steadily into the glass (having first wiped
off the dust), I began to eat Eve's forbidden
fruit, wishing intently, as I had been bidden,
for the apparition of my future husband.

In about ten minutes I heard a dull, vague,
unearthly sound; felt, not heard. It was as
if countless wings rushed by, and small low
voices whispering too; as if a crowd, a
multitude of life was about me; as if shadowy
faces crushed up against me, and eyes and
hands, and sneering lips, all mocked me. I
was suffocated. The air was so heavy, so filled
with life, that I could not breathe. I was
pressed on from all sides, and could not turn
nor move without parting thickening vapours.
I heard my own name, I can swear to that
today! I heard it repeated through the room;
and then bursts of laughter followed, and the
wings rustled and fluttered, and the whispering
voices mocked and chattered, and the
heavy air, so filled with life, hung heavier and
thicker, and the Things pressed up to me
closer, and checked the breath on my lips
with the clammy breath from theirs.

I was not alarmed, I was not excited; but
I was fascinated and spell-bound; yet with
every sense seeming to possess ten times its
natural power. I still went on looking in the
glass, still earnestly desiring an apparition,
when suddenly I saw a man's face peering
over my shoulder in the glass. Girls, I could
draw that face to this hour! The low
forehead, with the short curling hair, black as jet,
growing down in a sharp point; the dark
eyes, beneath thick eye-brows, burning with
a peculiar light; the nose and the dilating
nostrils; the thin lips, curling into a smile, I
see them all plainly before me now. And—
O, the smile that it was!—the mockery and
sneer, the derision, the sarcasm, the contempt,
the victory that were in it! even then it struck
into me a sense of submission. The eyes
looked full into mine; those eyes and mine
fastened on each other; and, as I ended my
task, the church clock chimed the half-hour;
and, suddenly released, as if from a spell, I
turned round, expecting to see a living man
standing beside me. But I met only the chill
air coming in from the loose window, and the
solitude of the dark night. The Life had
gone; the wings had rushed away; the voices
had died out, and I was alone; with the rats
behind the wainscot, the owls hooting in the
ivy, and the wind howling through the trees.

Convinced that either some trick had
been played me, or that some one was
concealed in the room, I searched every corner
of it. I lifted lids of boxes filled with the dust
of ages, and with rotting paper lying like
bleaching skin. I took down the chimney-
board, and soot and ashes fiew up in clouds. I
opened dim old closets, where all manner of
foul insects had made thier homes, and where
daylight had not entered for generations; but
I found nothing. Satisfied that nothing
human was in the room, and that no one could
have been there to-night, nor for many months,
if not years, and still nerved to a state of
desperate courage, I went back to the drawing-
room. But, as I left that room I felt that
something flowed out with me; and, all
through the long passages, I retained the
sensation that this something was behind me.
My steps were heavy, the consciousness of
pursuit having paralyzed not quickened me;
for I knew that when I left that haunted
room I had not left it alone. As I opened
the drawing-room door, the blazing fire and
the strong lamp-light bursting out upon me
with a peculiar expression of cheerfulness and
welcome, I heard a laugh close at my elbow,
and felt a hot blast across my neck. I started
back, but the laugh died away, and all I saw
were two points of light, fiery and flaming,
that somehow fashioned themselves into eyes
beneath their heavy brows, and looked at me
meaningly through the darkness.

They all wanted to know what I had seen;
but I refused to say a word; not liking to tell
a falsehood then, and not liking to expose
myself to ridicule. For I felt that what I had
seen was true, and that no sophistry and no
argument, no reason and no ridicule, could
shake my belief in it. My sweet Lucy came
up to me, seeing me look so pale and wild,
threw her arms round my neck, and leaned
forward to kiss me. As she bent her head, I
felt the same warm blast rush over my lips,
and my sister, cried, "Why Lizzie, your lips
burn like fire!"

And so they did, and for long after. The
Presence was with me still, never leaving me
day or night: by my pillow, its whispering
voice often waking me from wild dreams; by
my side in the broad sunlight; by my side
in the still moonlight; never absent, busy at
my brain, busy at my heart—a form ever
banded to me. It flitted like a cold cloud
between my sweet sister's eyes and mine, and
dimmed them so that I could scarcely see
their beauty. It drowned my father's voice,
and his words fell confused and indistinct.

Not long after, a stranger came into our
neighbourhood. He bought Green Howe, a
deserted old property by the river side, where
no one had lived for many years; not since
the young bride, Mrs. Braithwaite, had been
found in the river one morning, entangled
among the dank weeds and dripping alders,
strangled and drowned, and her husband
dead—none knew how—lying by the chapel
door. The place had had a bad name ever
since, and no one would live there. However,
it was said that a stranger, who had been long
in the East, a Mr. Felix, had now bought it,
and that he was coming to reside there. And,
true enough, one day, the whole of our little
town of Thornhill was in a state of excitement;
for a travelling carriage and four, followed by
another full of servants—Hindoos, or Lascars,