an ample, cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also
white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought,
like a pale throne.

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was
silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchens; solemn,
because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-
maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors
and the furniture a week's quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed herself,
at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain
secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parch-
ments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased
husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the bed-
room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber
he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin
was borne by the undertaker's men; and, since that day, a
sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent
intrusion.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had
left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-
piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was
the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections
the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled
windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the
vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure
whether they had locked the door; and, when I dared move,
I got up, and went to see. Alas! yes, no jail was ever more
secure. Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass;
my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it
revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary
hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there
gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom,
and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had
the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny
phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories repre-
sented as coming up out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and
appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to
my stool.

Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not
yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm;
the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its
bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective
thought before I quailed to the dismal present.

-8-