The winds whistle more
shrilly in the stillness of that lonely hour. Man and beast are in
their lair, and unearthly things alone seem stirring;--the good genius
glides with a holy and hallowing influence through the tranquil
dwelling of virtue; the demon grins and gibbers in the deserted but
reeking chambers of the vicious. Even sorrow has phantoms of its own;
and when Amelia found herself a lonely watcher in the stillness of
night, the kind voice of old Allanby,--the voice that was wont of yore
to bid her speak her bosom's wish that it might be granted,--often
seemed creeping into the inmost cell of her ear. She could fancy him
close beside her,--taunting her,--touching her,--till, starting from
her seat, she strove to shake off the hideous delusion. Sometimes
the soft cordial tones of her mother,--her mother, who was in the
grave,--seemed again dispensing those lessons of virtue of which
her own life had afforded so pure an example: sometimes the playful
caresses of her boys seemed to grow warm upon her lips--around her
neck. Yes! she could hear them, see them:--little Charles, who, in
his very babyhood, had been accustomed to uplift his tiny arm in
championship of his own dear mother;--Digby, the soft, tender,
loving infant, whose every look was a smile, whose every action an
endearment!--And now they appeared to pass before her as strangers;
changed--matured--enlightened;--without one word of fondness--one
gesture of recognition!
"From such meditations, how horrible to start up amid the dreariness
of night, nor find a human heart unto which to appeal for comfort,--a
human voice from which to claim reply in annihilation of the spell
that transfixed her mind.
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