When she looked again
the spectre had disappeared.
Of the two females, the aunt now required the most soothing, for
she was perfectly beside herself with terror. As to the young
lady, there was something even in the spectre of her lover that
seemed endearing. There was still the semblance of manly beauty,
and, though the shadow of a man is but little calculated to
satisfy the affections of a lovesick girl, yet where the
substance is not to be had even that is consoling. The aunt
declared she would never sleep in that chamber again; the niece,
for once, was refractory, and declared as strongly that she would
sleep in no other in the castle: the consequence was, that she
had to sleep in it alone; but she drew a promise from her aunt
not to relate the story of the spectre, lest she should be denied
the only melancholy pleasure left her on earth--that of
inhabiting the chamber over which the guardian shade of her lover
kept its nightly vigils.
How long the good old lady would have observed this promise is
uncertain, for she dearly loved to talk of the marvellous, and
there is a triumph in being the first to tell a frightful story;
it is, howover, still quoted in the neighborhood as a memorable
instance of female secrecy that she kept it to herself for a
whole week, when she was suddenly absolved from all further
restraint by intelligence brought to the breakfast-table one
morning that the young lady was not to be found.
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