The lost bride; vol. 2

AS we drove home Aunt Jane said that she felt sure that Mrs. Lacy had something on her mind, for she had never known her to be so reserved before.

“But we may go there again before Cunigunda arrives, may we not?” asked I, for I longed to ramble over the old ruins, and penetrate, if possible, into those uninhabited and haunted rooms.

“Yes, we will come here for that purpose; but I see plainly that Mrs. Lacy does not wish to have any visitors.”

So we drove over the next day, but instead of approaching the house by the usual route, we took another road through the park, which led by the river-side, and crossing a bridge, drove up the steep hill by the old road which led to the former entrance to the ancient Castle, and there we wandered about for hours, to our heart’s content.

There is nothing I ever loved more than wandering among ruins and old dwellings. As a child in Italy I used to enjoy it, but the bright south does not seem to harmonize so well with bygone ages as the more mellowed tints of English skies. There was something, too, in the cloudy day that seemed to accord so well with the sight. The very gloom seemed, like moonlight, to harmonize with the mystic spirit of bygone ages which pervaded the old Castle Hall.

I found myself thinking of the people who inhabited it many centuries ago. They seemed to live and breathe around me. How is it that the past tells one more of the future than the present ever does? I suppose that the spirit-world into which the past sends us—the world of shadow, which seems more present with us than the actual things or people we see—has more of permanence about it, and consequently leads us to hope for an eternal hereafter, making one happy with a kind of hallowed, solemn, yet trembling hope. I felt as if all the spirits of the former inhabitants were hovering protectingly around me, and, except in the darkness, I do not dread to see them. But I suffer from nervous panic fears at night, in most old houses, and cannot get over it. Yet I always find them particularly pleasant by day.

We first walked round the inner court of the ancient Castle, and peeped down into the dungeons and cellars, and tried, from the top of some mounds of earth and stones, to make out the plan of the original building. Then I climbed as far as the broken staircase would allow, inside Cæsar’s Tower, which reached scarcely half-way up that lofty building, and then I penetrated through a dark, narrow passage, into some of the windowless rooms of the wing which wound down the hill towards the present Hall. The floors were partly gone, but I managed to climb along the sides, where stone projections gave me tolerably firm footing.

Part of the carved ceilings still remained in some of them, and I fancied that the rooms overhead must be in a better condition, for I felt sure by the outside appearance, and from the rows of upper windows, that there was a story above. But in vain I searched for a staircase, or some means of getting on to the higher level. After a most diligent search, I was obliged to give up the attempt.

In the part nearest Cæsar’s Tower, I saw there were two stories above the ruinous suite through which I rambled, and that the fourth story must be on a level with the beautiful oriel window of the great tower which overlooked the precipice. Ah! what would I not give to reach that window! I thought I would resolve to try on the outside whether any tower staircase still remained; so I went down to the room underneath, climbed through a ruined window, and found myself on a narrow strip of grass on the precipice side of the walls. The footing was not very safe, but I persevered till I passed round a projecting buttress, which point commanded a splendid view down upon the Hall to the right, and towards Cæsar’s Tower on the left. I had a little sketch-book in my pocket, and as I stood (for there was not room to sit down), I made a sketch of Cæsar’s Tower and the beautiful oriel window. I fancied I could discern some painted glass in one of the upper mullions, and there was certainly glass in all except one compartment. I made a correct sketch of the window, and endeavoured to copy the coats of arms and red cross of the Rolands, when, just as I was putting the last stroke, I saw something pass inside, and then, for an instant, a beautiful pale face appeared at the open compartment. It was gone in a moment. Could it have been fancy? I thought, so instantaneously was it gone. I waited some time in hopes it would appear again—or had the wind blown something across the open space, in the folds of which I had conjured up a lovely face? I could see that some creepers were growing on the battlements above the window, and there might be some inside on which the light fell, and my vivid imagination may have turned it into a lovely face.

Aunt Jane’s voice, proceeding from one of the ruined chambers over my head, calling to me in great alarm, entreated me to return.

“How could you stand in such a perilous position, child?” she said, when I had re-climbed through the ruined gable, and joined her up in the windowless and floorless rooms.

“And how could you get up into this perilous spot?” I retorted, as I saw her perched up on the stone parapet.

“Well, I am a good climber, too,” she laughingly said, “but I could not have stood to make a sketch on that narrow ledge where I saw you; and what a good view you have taken, too!”

“And I have seen the ghost also,” I said triumphantly. “I am sure it was Lady Alice; nothing but a ghost could appear and disappear so quickly as the beautiful face did in the oriel window, and I don’t wonder now at what we hear!”

“A face!—impossible! Why, there is no entrance. I have been searching everywhere to try and get up to these upper rooms, and there certainly is none.”

We then went into the open courtyard, and looked in all directions.

“Perhaps there may be a way up to them from the old chapel,” said Aunt Jane. “Look! its high roof is just on a level with that second story, and the third story in yonder buildings is on a level with the oriel.”

We both felt the greatest curiosity to penetrate the mystery, but it was now getting too dark to proceed with the search, and Aunt Jane did not like to delay our drive down the steep hill and through the thick woods any longer, so we woke up our little driver, who had fallen fast asleep on the box, and went home.

We determined, however, to return the next day; but unfortunately the news reached us in the morning that the family were expected to arrive that very day at Castle Hall. So there was an end of our researches and pleasant rambles, for we both determined not to go near it while Cunigunda was there.

I FOUND afterwards that Aunt Jane had often heard from Norah during my long illness, or rather stupor, but she carefully concealed the letters from me, lest my attention should have been arrested by the poor girl’s handwriting, and she felt that my self-reproach might endanger my life, if any circumstance awakened the recollection of the grievous wrong I had done to her.

It was not until Aunt Jane had gladly seen my interest awakened by the strange history of the Roland family, which fortunately diverted my mind from recent events, that she ventured even to allow me to speak or think of anything connected with the exciting events of the last six months; and, above all, she avoided any allusion to Norah.

She used to make me describe the beautiful scenery of my Italian home, and repeat any words of conversation of my father and mother which I could recollect. By inquiring his opinion on various subjects, she seemed to revive long dormant recollections, and words unheeded at the time were, by her comments and the experience my suffering (more than age) had given, enabled me to read his character by a still more attractive light.

My deep affection for him, which had hitherto been more an instinct, thus became not only intensified, but justified by reason and fact. She purposely, though gradually, began to awaken my fears lest his character should suffer in the opinion of the unthinking world, by the imputations thrown out by Mr. Mordaunt—that he had purposely concealed the marriage of his brother and birth of a son. I say purposely, because she was prompted by the kindest motives to do this, in order to excite my interest and prevent my mind from again falling back into its fatal lethargy.

For a time this anxiety about the slur which might be cast on my father seemed entirely to engross my mind, but one fatal morning, when Aunt Jane was confined to her bed with a violent cold, the letters were brought in to me, and I saw one for Aunt Jane in Norah’s handwriting.

It was as if a thunderbolt had been gradually gathering over my head, and now suddenly exploded with annihilating force. All my guilt, the thoughtless perverseness of my conduct, appeared in its true blackness before my startled gaze, and then the remorse I felt seemed to paralyse all my faculties.

How I survived this suddenly awakened and most poignant and stunning grief I never could understand. This thorough awakening to a consciousness of the full guilt and folly of my conduct Aunt Jane had been anxious to postpone till my bodily health became stronger, for she fancied that when I came fully to understand the wrong I had entailed on Norah, remorse would nearly kill me.

It would, she thought, be the great turning-point of my life if I were strong enough fully to feel, and yet survive the shock. I now saw plainly how deeply I had injured the person I loved and venerated most—a character which, from the first moment I became acquainted with it, seemed the embodiment of everything beautiful and good. To think that I had inflicted on her one of the greatest sorrows that one woman can be guilty of towards another!

I now remembered her every look and word during my painful illness—how she actually rescued me from the grave, for I certainly should have died without her judicious efforts and her extraordinary soothing power.

For a time I sat with the letters before me, without moving. I seemed to see nothing but that handwriting. Strange that I never should have felt all this before, except at that moment when Aunt Jane arrived in London, and suddenly made me write the letter to Sir Alfred Rivers. I was even then so full of anger towards him that my compassion for Norah was by no means fully aroused; and the excitement was so great that I became insensible as soon as the letter was gone; and when I partly recovered, Aunt Jane saw that I could bear no more.

I might have sat for hours looking at that loved handwriting, had not the maid come from Aunt Jane to inquire whether there were no letters for her.

“Ah! yes,” I said, with the kind of emphasis as if I felt that the most important letter in the world had arrived. “Oh! yes, I will take it—I will take them to her myself.”

The moment I opened her door, she scanned me with one of her most searching looks, as if half anticipating some result which she had been labouring to avert. Then she saw it all—the total change in my expression, the conscious horror and dismay, the acute suffering which had replaced the dull, heavy look of passive discontent, alternating with half-conscious enjoyment of the scenes around me and the beauties of nature.

“It must be a letter from Norah,” she said, before she looked at those I held in my hand. “Well, give it—give them to me,” she said, with a solemn voice, “and go and walk in the garden, on your favourite bank by the river, while the sun shines; and when you come in I will see whether I can show you her letter.”

Then she took my hand, and kissed my forehead, as if she were satisfied with the sad expression it wore, and the resignation to bear, as I must, what I had brought upon myself. She afterwards showed me the letter, which I found was full of anxiety about my state. Norah’s father was better, but it was decided that they were to pass the next Winter in a warmer climate, and would probably go to Rome or Naples.

“Ah! how I hope they will meet, then; for Sir Alfred may possibly be there!” I exclaimed.

“So do I,” said Aunt Jane; “for if any one could reclaim him, and develop his naturally good qualities, it is Norah. And to-morrow you may write and tell her how you are yourself—not to-day. You must economise your agonies,” she added, with a smile, “or you will not live long enough to repent.”

AMONG the subjects which Aunt Jane, for my own sake, encouraged me to talk about at this time, was that of the character and adventures of my remarkable relation, Countess Rossi, and of her beautiful cousin Dorina, the first betrothed of Count Rossi, who had disappeared the night before her marriage.

In order to make the sequel of my story intelligible, I will here relate what I told Aunt Jane, at that time, in various conversations.

Not far from the celebrated Caves of Adelberg may still be seen one of those ancient castles that remind the traveller of days and customs long passed away. Hohenstein is, or was some twenty years ago, inhabited by the then representative of the ancient family whose name it bears. The Graf von Hohenstein had an only child, Dorina, a young girl who, at the time I was taken by my guardian to Paris, had lately come from the convent at Udine, where she had been educated. Her mother was a Venetian, of the noble family of Rossi, and died a year or two before Dorina had been betrothed to her second cousin, Count Rossi. The young couple were, at the express wish of Dorina’s mother, betrothed a year before she left the convent; but as soon as she attained her seventeenth year, the marriage was to take place at Hohenstein, with great splendour.

While I was at my convent in Paris, I heard all about the projected fêtes from my mother, who, as a near relation of Count Rossi, had been asked to stay at Hohenstein for a couple of months, to be present at the marriage.

The Count Hohenstein’s mother was English, the Countess Bianca (the Lady Blanche Roland, of Castle Hall, the only daughter, and, after her brother’s death, sole heir of the Earl of Roland). Dorina’s great friend and constant companion was Cunigunda, the only child of the Count’s younger brother, consequently her first cousin, and, after Dorina, next heiress to the possessions of the Hohenstein family. She was more than a year older than Dorina, but her parents had arranged that she should remain in the convent until Dorina’s education should be finished.

The brilliant and beautiful Cunigunda was by no means so fond of the convent, or its inmates, as her more gentle and loving cousin, and the extra year of bondage, as she called it, annoyed her so much that she gave vent to her spleen by many practical jokes, to the scandal of the good nuns, and dismay of her confessor. Few women liked Cunigunda except Dorina, who always endeavoured to screen her wild and mischievous cousin from disgrace. Dorina had inherited her mother’s delicate constitution, and although her form and features were lovely, yet her paleness formed a contrast to her more brilliant cousin.

My mother told me that Cunigunda’s greatest amusement—in fact, passion—seemed to be to make conquests; and she more than suspected that the object of her ambition was to captivate Count Rossi before the ceremony should take place—to make him give up the heiress, and propose to herself.

From the first day of my mother’s arrival at Hohenstein she began to suspect the game that the dazzling creature was playing, but discarded—at first—the idea as something too dreadful; for Count Rossi was evidently deeply attached to his gentle fiancée, and her changing colour—the joy that seemed to tremble in her eyes whenever he addressed her—gave full evidence of her affection for him.

The chase in the morning was generally succeeded by dancing in the evening; and these dances ended with a polonaise, in which guests of all ages joined, and paraded the long suites of rooms, up and down stairs, and into the old gallery, which extended all over the upper story. Sometimes these were headed by the young fiancés, but more often by Cunigunda and some grandee; and when this was the case, she was sure to lead the procession into all kinds of out-of-the-way and unexpected places.

One night she led them down a remote turret stairs, into a place which had formerly been a prison under the Castle, which she had secretly contrived to make the good seneschal illuminate with brilliant-coloured lamps. Then, to the surprise of even the Count himself, who had forgotten the existence of this entrance into the caves, Cunigunda tapped with a theatrically mysterious air at a small door at the further end, and beckoning to those behind, she bade them follow her into what she laughingly called an enchanted palace. It was at once opened, but the doorway was so small and low that only one person could enter by stooping.

An exclamation of wonder and delight was heard from the numerous guests who followed Cunigunda and her partner. It really looked like a scene of enchantment, for a portion of the celebrated Adelsberg caves, with their brilliant stalactites, was disclosed to the view of the guests, illumined with many torches, held up by people at intervals, who had been stationed there.

The coolness too of the place on that hot Summer night was delicious, and the Count von Hohenstein was so pleased that he determined to give a regular ball to all the neighbourhood in the caves, and said he would light them with coloured lamps, and put down a temporary floor to dance upon.

THE grand ball was appointed to take place at Schloss Hohenstein, on the night before the day fixed for the wedding. The Count had placed the carrying out of the fête in the hands of Cunigunda, at her urgent request, and certainly she had more than fulfilled the high expectations already raised. The uneven ground had been boarded over, and lamps of every hue illuminated the brilliant roof and columns, formed of the white and pink incrustations from the roof which, meeting those rising up from the ground, produced a variety of graceful forms, resembling Corinthian pillars and Gothic arches. Behind one large stalactite lights were placed, and being transparent, it shone with a pale pink light, producing a beautiful and magical effect. Garlands of flowers formed a boundary in some places; in others distant vistas, illuminated by chains of coloured lamps, stretched as far, apparently, as the eye could reach; in others curtains of tapestry, or of Aubusson carpets, closed up cavernous depths, which, if left unscreened, would have spoiled the composition, and produced a feeling of desolation.

It was truly a scene of enchantment, a bit of fairyland, a realization of some of the most graceful dreams of German imagination, such as De la Motte Fouqué loved to paint, and by which he has entranced grown-up children of all nations.

Some of the distant vistas were bordered with what appeared like strings of brilliant emeralds; others with rubies or sapphires; and they were strung in festoons, with a larger light, that resembled a diamond, as a centre brooch.

In fact, the effect was like splendid necklaces of precious stones, set in every kind of graceful device. Some appeared to culminate in a fanciful and intricate pattern, beneath which seats, covered with velvets of different colours, were placed. From these more open, and, as it were, public seats, others placed in shade, and only partly illumined, might be discerned in the background. These Cunigunda called “Conversationen-sitzen,” and pointed them out to many a young pair as they passed up and down the broader walks, while her maliciously-speaking eyes seemed to say, “Those are flirting-places.”

In some of these seats the light was shaded by a trellis-work of fragrant flowers, which produced a kind of chequered shade, and emitted the most delicious perfumes.

Certainly that night there seemed to be something almost magical in Cunigunda’s dazzling beauty. She was dressed in a kind of silvery tissue, which formed a brilliant contrast to her jet-black hair and star-like eyes. A wreath of white water-lilies crowned her head, and drooping down her shoulders, was interwoven with the tresses of her black hair. Except when speaking, her eyes were generally downcast, her long black eyelashes resting on cheeks delicately tinted with rose-colour. Then, when she spoke, the sudden flash with which she looked up, and, as it were, fixed the beholder, was as startling as an electric shock.

She is a person who makes you feel her presence, whether you will or not.

My mother said she often felt as if she were looking at some awful conflagration, yet could not take her eyes away from her. And I myself have felt her glances on my face smiting like a blast from a furnace, and her words and voice continuing to vibrate in my ear long after she had ceased to speak.

She was, in fact, a creature of stronger vitality than ever I saw before, added to the power of an unscrupulous will, and a chameleon-like manifestation of good and evil.

Towards the end of the evening, my mother caught a momentary expression on Cunigunda’s face as the two fiancés passed close to her, and felt convinced that she was determined to make Count Rossi, although he was to be married on the morrow, dance the next dance that night. A few minutes afterwards, Cunigunda went up to the bridegroom (as he is called in Germany even before the ceremony takes place), and with a playful “One dance with me, Count, this last night, and Dorina will be our vis-à-vis,” she carried him off triumphantly.

It was getting late, and some of the lamps in the remoter avenues, which were smaller than the rest, had begun to fail. It was after the galop, and numerous couples were pacing along the avenues, or sought in their comparative retirement a pleasant place for rest amid the flowery bowers. My mother was standing near the centre column; the dance was ended; Dorina and her partner passed close to her, and Cunigunda, who, with Count Rossi, came by at that moment, said to Dorina’s partner that they should go to the end of yonder emerald-lighted avenue for the most beautiful coup-d’œil of the ball-room, adding that she and Count Rossi had just come from thence, and when she had seen them move in the direction pointed out, she suddenly turned to her partner and said, “I am dying with thirst—cannot you get me a verre d’eau sucré?”

My mother, who admired the fête extremely, and wished, also, to enjoy the sight of it from what Cunigunda asserted to be the most beautiful point de vue, determined to follow Dorina and her partner, who had walked slowly in that direction, when she saw that the further end of the chain of emerald lamps was gradually becoming quite extinguished, and that even where she was, some were beginning to flicker and fade away.

Not liking the idea of darkness in those intricate passages, she said to some young ladies near her that she was thinking of returning to the central hall, when suddenly a fearful shriek from the now obscure end of the emerald avenue struck upon her ear. Another and another followed. People, my mother among them, hurried towards the spot; and then, finding themselves impeded by the increasing darkness, some rushed back to seize wax candles or torches, or whatever could be got, to light them on the way. At that moment Cunigunda came up, with a face of real or feigned alarm, and cried out,

“Mein Gott! wo ist Dorina?”

“Why, why—where is she?” asked several voices; and Cunigunda said,

“I saw her last going down the emerald avenue with the bello Inglese.”

A scene of the most frightful confusion and consternation followed, which can be more easily imagined than described. Search was made in every direction with torches and such other lights as could be taken from brackets, into all the known alleys and intricacies of the cave. Except in the long alleys, which had been boarded over, not only was the ground uneven, but deep fissures and chasms occasionally appeared, into which a false step might precipitate anyone to a great depth. As soon, however, as more torches were brought by the Graf’s order, he and Count Rossi went in different directions, while they sent others into all the known alleys and intricacies of the cave.

Some of the guests had, in traversing the alleys, fallen a considerable depth, and were much hurt; but no trace of Dorina or her English partner could be discovered. Soon all the brilliant illuminations in the cave went out, and only a few torches were left to throw a dim light on the terrible scene.

My mother saw that Cunigunda was ringing her hands in dismay, but she clung to one of her recent partners, imploring him not to leave her, or she would be sure to fall into some of the dreadful depths. My mother saw that the crowd rather impeded than otherwise the search for the missing couple, and suggested that the best plan would be for all the guests to leave the cave, and endeavour to send down more people with torches.

Cunigunda caught at the idea, and implored my mother to go with her. She said that Dorina’s old nurse would be in dreadful anxiety, and she might be of use to her.

No one thought of going to bed that night, and although nearly all the guests had left the cave, they remained in the Banqueting Hall, which was not far from its entrance, in order to obtain the first intelligence, when those parties who were searching should return.

Towards morning the Graf and his brother (Cunigunda’s father) returned, muddy, wet, and bruised, but their search had been unsuccessful; and the Graf was now determined to proceed to the cave of Adelsberg, with which, it was said, there was a communication from those under the Castle, and cause search to be made in every direction there. He had left some servants with torches in different parts underneath; and the Count Rossi was still searching in another direction.

The Graf von Hohenstein took a compass with him, in order to ascertain the south-eastern direction, in case they found avenues from one set of caves to the other, and sent down a party to start from the caves underneath, and, if possible, meet those coming from the Adelsberg caves.

Just as the miserable father was leaving the Castle on this, his most uncertain expedition, one of the gardeners rushed into the hall, and said he feared that their search would be useless, because he was now sure that the two persons he had seen pass along the South Terrace walk in the moonlight, just before midnight, were the Gräfinn Dorina and the Englishman. They were walking quietly towards the stables. On being asked whether he saw their faces, and was sure it was the Gräfinn, he said he could not tell; but that when he heard she could not be found anywhere, he thought it might be possible.

“Still,” he said, “it seemed so unlikely the Gräfinn should be going towards the stables at that time of night, he would not have thought of mentioning it, if the Countess Cunigunda’s maid had not also said she saw them from her window, and was certain that the lady she saw was the Gräfinn Dorina, and had on a pink dress and white veil or cloak.”

Messengers were now sent in all directions to inquire of the country people whether anyone had been seen that night riding away from the Castle. But still the Graf von Hohenstein proceeded to Adelsberg, because it seemed to be the general impression that his daughter had been seen entering the emerald avenue, not long before those fearful cries were heard, which caused such alarm among the company.

Count Rossi had not yet returned from his search in the cave, but as the Graf von Hohenstein had met him twice in the course of their search, and Jägers were stationed at intervals, with torches, in the principal passages, they did not fear for his safety; and the distracted lover had declared his intention never to give up the search till he had found Dorina.

On the departure of the Graf von Hohenstein for Adelsberg, his brother returned to the cave, and the old steward wisely sent refreshments down for the Count, and all those who were determined to prolong their search; also restoratives for the Gräfinn, if they were so fortunate as to find her alive. But as fourteen hours had now passed since she disappeared, few among the anxious throng could venture to indulge a hope that, if she were really in the cave, she could be alive.

DORINA was loved by all the retainers and peasants on her father’s vast estates, and bitter were the lamentations uttered by all who heard of the catastrophe. That she should have died in some dark recess of those vast caves was fearful to think of, and yet the supposition (which my mother felt convinced originated with Cunigunda) that Dorina had fled with the English youth on the very day before she was to wed the Count, seemed still more revolting.

Two of the gentlemen who, among the guests, were the most energetic in prosecuting the search, found that about twenty yards beyond, and on the left of the flowery seat which terminated the emerald avenue, the floor descended suddenly to a much lower level, and there was a narrow entrance to a much smaller cavern. This lower cave had three small outlets, and they determined to pursue the centre one, which appeared to descend more precipitately than the other two.

As the Adelberg caves were on a lower level than those of Hohenstein, they thought that the lower they kept the more likely they were to reach them. As they proceeded they searched on the ground, in hopes of finding footmarks that might serve as a guide. In one place they fancied they saw the prints of a small foot. Again, further on, there was another, but no larger one; therefore, if this was Dorina’s, they considered she must have been alone at that time.

Soon afterwards these passages became narrower, and so low that they could scarcely stand upright; but as they proceeded further it opened out into a cave so large and high that, though they held up their torches for some time, no boundaries were visible. Keeping close to one side, they went on, and, to their dismay, discovered a great number of outlets; and here the droppings from the roof formed numerous pools, so that no footsteps could be discovered. They then began reluctantly to acknowledge that a further search was impossible, and; fearing to lose themselves irrecoverably, they selected one of the outlets that led in a southerly direction.

Soon afterwards, however, they met Count Rossi, and a large party of gentlemen and servants, and informed him of the small footprint they had seen in the narrow passage. The Count, of course, wished to go and search in that direction, and the two Englishmen accompanied him. But they found it impossible to remember which of the numerous outlets from the large cave which contained pools of water was the one by which they had entered it. In vain they searched in all directions—no footprints, nor even any passage so low as the one where they had seen it, could be found.

The Count was at last persuaded to give up this hopeless search, and walked slowly back to the Castle without speaking a word. His eyes had a glazed and vacant look; his cheeks were very pale; he walked as one in a dream, and the party accompanied him in dead silence. It was very late when they arrived at the Castle, and towards morning the Graf von Hohenstein also returned home, exhausted by fatigue and sorrow, and much injured by a fall in the Adelsberg cave, which broke his arm, and bruised him severely.

Day after day passed on, no intelligence of the missing pair had arrived, and there was every reason to fear that they had perished in the cave, or that the gardener’s report of having seen the Gräfinn walk to the stable, was true. The latter hypothesis was utterly rejected by the unhappy father and bridegroom, who, as time passed on, became more and more convinced that they should never again behold in this world their beloved Dorina.

It sometimes crossed my mother’s mind that if the unhappy bride and her partner had been lost in the windings of the cave, and did not die, they might have fallen into the hands of smugglers or banditti, who were said to infest some of its secret outlets, and carry on, in defiance of the Government, their illicit trade. If so, they might keep them prisoners for some time, lest their haunt should be made known. She hinted this possibility to several people; and the Graf himself stationed men to watch night and day on the roads and lanes leading to the Adelsberg caves on the other side. For weeks they watched, but no traces of banditti or smugglers were to be seen, nor were even the remains of any of their secret dens discovered amid these wild and gloomy ravines, which appeared untrodden by the foot of man.

FOR a wicked person, Cunigunda was, or rather had been, unusually happy. She had succeeded in most of her wishes, and her life had been an incessant series of triumphs. Her deepest feeling, or rather greatest passion, had been excited by the man she succeeded in marrying, and yet from the moment of that marriage began to date the decline of her prosperity. She was not satisfied with the depth of his love, for she began gradually to perceive that she could not inspire the same devotion, the all-absorbing, reverential adoration he had evinced for his affianced Dorina.

Then she flirted, and endeavoured to excite his jealousy, little understanding the high tone of his mind, but judging him by the standard of her own. She was first surprised, then alarmed to see the feeling of disgust her efforts produced. She soon became tired of the unsuccessful game she was playing, and strove to throw herself heartily into every kind of dissipation and excitement. A triumphant season at Rome, and then at Paris, was succeeded by one in London. At the end of the last, having heard of the delights of English country-house society, she thought a few months passed at the place to which she had succeeded after the death of her cousin Dorina, might be an agreeable change. She therefore made a great merit of going there, in order to gratify her husband’s wishes, who, since their arrival in England, had passed several weeks there, since which time he had often expressed a wish that she would live at it, and restore the beauty of the somewhat ruinous house and place.

I afterwards heard that Carlo was at that time the chief among her numerous adorers. He had come to London after I had been taken ill, and he, with a few other men and two ladies in high society, but with rather damaged reputation, went to Castle Hall towards the end of August.

Some modern furniture had been sent, and a few necessary repairs suggested by Count Rossi had been made, and the gay party were enchanted with the grand old house, its fine terraced gardens and glowing parterres. The extensive view from the battlements of the old ruined castle above was so thoroughly English in its rich loveliness that its novelty surprised Cunigunda, and seemed to give her that great requirement of a blasé distraction-seeker, or (what is usually miscalled pleasure-seeker) a new sensation. Neighbours of various kinds flocked in to see and become acquainted with the celebrated beauty; and as there was in those days a large and gay neighbourhood, there was no end of morning and evening parties, besides some regular balls, which were given in the larger houses, or at the town of Darlingford, ten miles off.

I think I said there was a fine old half-ruined banqueting-hall, which joined the present house—an Elizabethan structure, with the lower buildings of the old castle. Part of this castle had been destroyed in the various wars from the time of the Roses down to the period when it was regularly besieged by Cromwell. Numerous dinners and some good private theatricals had been given at Castle Hall to the neighbours; but the party staying in the house, as well as the neighbours, declared that the beautiful Countess ought to give a ball.

“Yes, certainly, and let it be a fancy ball, or, better still, a masquerade,” said the lovely Countess; “but where?”

The long gallery, with its beautifully-carved ceiling, which extends for a hundred feet above the western wing of the house, would do very well for theatricals, but it would be impossible to have a good valse in a room not more than twenty-five feet wide, and the large wainscoted dining-room, though large enough, would be wanted for supper. The tapestried drawing-room was both lofty and spacious, but it was so full of old china and pietra-dura cabinets and curiosities, collected during the last century, since the family had been connected with Italy, that there was no room for dancing.

“Why not repair that splendid old banqueting-hall?” said Carlo, one evening after dinner. “A good floor might soon be put in, and the ceiling and windows mended. It is quite a sin to leave it in that dilapidated state. Did you ever look at the splendid old oak carving on the gallery at the farther end, and the curious little corner-room or oriel at one side with a most elaborate canopy?” he inquired of Cunigunda.

“No, for I thought it so very dismal and melancholy that I only just peeped in at the door.”

“Come, then, let us go and inspect it now; let us take lights and torches; we shall see it as well or better than by day, for some of those fine old Gothic windows seem to have been boarded up.”

Lights were then called for, and the merry party, each taking a couple of candles, declared they would all go and inspect the old hall.

“But I scarcely know the way,” said Cunigunda. “I only looked into the place through a kind of window in the wall of an old room beyond the library, a horrible kind of stone hall called the dead-room, and I don’t know that there is any door that leads into it.”

“There is from the outside, I know,” said Carlo; “for, as I once climbed up the steepest side of the Castle hill, I came upon it—a fine arched doorway, with a crossbar over it. This I knocked in, and I then saw there was another arched doorway near the window you speak of, looking into that dead-room. Moreover, I am sure the old housekeeper has the key of that, and knows how to get in, for she was very angry, I saw, when I told her I had been in it. She declared it was not safe, and nobody had ventured under that old roof for a century or more.”

“Let us have her in, and make the dear old lady show us the way,” said one of the ladies.

THE old housekeeper was then called, and came curtseying in, with her picturesque, old-fashioned Brussels lace cap and stomacher, and a brocaded petticoat which had formerly figured at the Court of Queen Charlotte, on one of the beauties of the family.

The old lady declared it was positively unsafe to venture into that old hall—no one had been there since she was quite a child, and, in fact, the doors had been built up, in order to prevent accidents.

“But I saw a lock on the one near the window, which I am sure leads into what you call the dead-room,” said Carlo, “and I think you have got the key.”

The old lady looked perplexed, and seemed at a loss what to say; whereupon the roguish Carlo, suspecting that she had some reason for not wishing them to go there, determined all the more to carry his point, and partly by persuasion, and partly by the force of will, he succeeded in making her go and look for the key. After some minutes she returned, with a ponderous rusty key.

“They do say it was formerly the chapel,” she said, “and Baron Hugh—the one over the door there—turned it into a hall after the Reformation; but, a-lack-a-day! it did not reform him, for he died in dreamland-tremens, and, as the young Count used to say, ‘it did take tree men to carry him to bed o’ nights.’ However, he died in his chair at the feast under the gallery, before he’d time to say a word, good or bad, and he left the property so encumbered that the fine old chapel hall, as we calls it, was left to go to ruin.”

“Then it was never used as a banqueting-hall, except in Baron Hugh’s time?”

“Never; and sure no luck would come of it after that; and so, thank God, none of the family ever tried the trick again.”

“But we want to give a ball there,” said Cunigunda.

“Oh! lack-a-day, my lady, don’t ever think of such a thing! Sure there’s the blue drawing-room, where I’ve seen many a fine dance, and was considered even good enough for Royalty—for our good Queen Charlotte, and the gracious King George, and the four fine young princesses danced there. Well I mind them, bless their fair faces! They came here ofttimes from Weyford.”

“Well, we will go through the blue drawing-room, but we must see the banqueting-room,” said Cunigunda, who, by the old housekeeper’s opposition, was made more anxious to see it.

The blue drawing-room was—like most of the old-fashioned with-drawing-rooms—upstairs, and beyond it, on a little higher level, was the library. At the further end of this long room there was a raised gallery, which was approached by a broad flight of stone steps, and in the centre of the gallery there was a high Gothic door, surrounded with a beautifully-carved stone arch.

“This here door,” said the old housekeeper, pointing to the massive oak panels, studded with large iron nails, “was said to have belonged to the cloisters which went round the ancient chapel; and here, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, with an air of triumph, as she swung open the massive door, which ground on its rusty hinges with a most lugubrious moan, “this is the dead-room.”

At the same moment a blast of cold and deadly damp wind blew in, and almost extinguished the candles. Some of the ladies screamed, and declared they would go no further; but Carlo and Cunigunda resolved to proceed, and were followed by one or two gentlemen.

The time-stained walls of the dead-room were supported on arches, and the lofty, pointed roof was of black oak. The stone floor was uneven and damp, and, seen by the flickering light of a few candles, it had a most lugubrious look.

“Now, quick, open the door of the banqueting-room,” said Cunigunda, who was gradually becoming somewhat frightened at the death-like smell and gloomy horror of the place.

The housekeeper applied her rusty key, but could not succeed in turning the lock; nor could the united efforts of Carlo and the other gentlemen produce any effect.

“Send for the men-servants, and send for the carpenter,” said Cunigunda.

Two of the gentlemen obeyed the imperious lady’s request, while she motioned to Carlo to remain with her and the housekeeper, and he continued to work at the lock. In a few seconds, just as the footsteps of the other gentlemen ceased to be heard in the distant apartments, the lock turned, and they entered the vast hall. The few candles they had did not throw any light on the lofty roof, but a faint light shone on the gallery at the farther end, which seemed to project far from the wall.

“See how beautifully carved that gallery is!” said Carlo, and he advanced with his two candles, and held them up aloft, while he looked back at Cunigunda. “Was I not right, and would not this make a splendid ball-room? But what is the matter?—what have you seen up there?” he inquired, as he saw Cunigunda turn deadly pale; then she gave a piercing shriek, as she fell backwards on the floor.

“Alack-a-day! deary me!—whatever has happened?” exclaimed the old housekeeper, as she put down her candles, and tried to lift up her fainting lady.

Carlo looked up with great curiosity towards the spot on the high gallery towards which Cunigunda’s eyes had been directed, but nothing save the black darkness was visible.

“What could it have been?—what did you see?” he eagerly inquired.

“No doubt it was the Baron Hugh’s ghost,” whispered Mrs. Lacy, “as it is said to haunt the place o’ nights, and strange lights have been seen up in the windows, and, deary me! I said all I could to stop her ladyship and the quality from coming here. Come, dear lady, let us get you out of this,” she added, as they half lifted the still pale and trembling Cunigunda out of the banqueting-room, and crossing the dead-room as quickly as possible, did not stop till they laid her on a sofa in the library. Her maid was then sent for, and sal-volatile and other restoratives applied. But she was evidently much shaken by the strange fright, of the cause of which she would give no explanation; and Count Rossi hoped that she had given up all idea of having a ball in the old hall, for since he had heard it was formerly a chapel, he strongly disapproved of its being still further desecrated.

But, to his infinite disappointment, the next morning she laughed at her fears, said it must have been a large white bat or owl she saw up in the gallery, and expressed her determination to send for workmen and have the room properly restored and decorated; for, she added, she was resolved to give a masqued ball and astonish the neighbours with the magnificence of the scene.

A FEW days after the occurrences related in the last chapter, I accompanied Aunt Jane to the old blind woman’s cottage. We had not been there for several weeks, for Aunt Jane had sprained her ankle just before the owners of Castle Hall arrived there, and was confined to her room in consequence. But the first day she was able to venture out we went to the cottage.

We found the old blind woman alone at her spinning-wheel, and we both thought she looked ill; and although she expressed the great pleasure she felt at hearing our footstep in her cottage again after a long absence, yet she seemed pre-occupied, and had an anxious look on her face, which we had never remarked before. It occurred to us both that she was perhaps rather disappointed with her new lady, and we soon discovered that our surmises were just.

“Great doings at the Castle,” she said; “very great, but not good, I do fear; and the old chapel—have you heard how they are going to make a ball-room of it?—and that, too, when they know what a judgment fell on Baron Hugh when he turned it into a banqueting-hall. No good will come of it: nothing but evil—nothing but evil,” she continued to mutter; and a look of pain and anxiety overclouded her usually serene face.

“And was it true that the Countess saw a ghost there?” I inquired, for some vague rumour of Cunigunda’s serious alarm had reached our ears.

“Like enough, like enough,” she said, hurriedly; “but ’twas not old Baron Hugh, ’twas her conscience smote her, but she had her warning, and yet she’s gone against her husband’s wishes, for he tried all he could to hold her back; if she’s going on to give that ball in the old chapel she’ll rue the day, and perhaps lose the inheritance, or maybe her life.”

“Do you really fear that?” said Aunt Jane; “I did not know you were so superstitious. So you really believe in ghosts?”

“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t; but I do wish—well, never mind; I mustn’t be talking too much—least said soonest mended, so don’t ask me any more about them folks, but tell me some of your good thoughts.”

Then Aunt Jane talked and read to her for half an hour, and we took our leave, rather wondering at the alteration in her manner.

“Yet she does not look unhappy, only so pre-occupied and anxious; yet why should she care so much for what that roguish Countess does?”

Soon afterwards we heard that the Banqueting-room had been all repaired; a highly polished parquet of different coloured woods laid down; an old narrow gallery repaired for the musicians, opposite to the large carved black oak one at the further end, which the builder said was too much out of repair to be finished by the time the Countess required the room—therefore it was left untouched. Of course vague rumours of the fright experienced by Cunigunda soon reached our ears, and as it was a well-known fact in the neighbourhood that the sacrilegious Baron Hugh was said to haunt the ancient chapel, people attributed to the gay lady’s imagination that, having heard of it so much, she fancied that she saw him standing in the gallery.

Rumour also reached us—the revival of an old story which Aunt Jane remembered to have heard when she was a child—that the crypt under the old chapel was used in the last, and part of this century, by smugglers; and it was their interest to keep up the story of the ghost, in order to prevent anyone from entering that part of the ruined building.

The old stone floor of the chapel was very uneven, but we did not hear that the workmen who were now employed in placing the variegated parquet of different-coloured woods over it, had discovered any opening to the crypt which was said to be underneath, although we heard that they had found that on some of the stones of the old floor were monumental records of persons who were said to be buried underneath.

“Not a satisfactory flooring for a ball-room,” was Aunt Jane’s observation to the old village shoemaker, who generally told us the news about the Castle.

“No, indeed,” he said. “Can any good come of such a ‘sacrament?’ as old Mrs. Lacy, the housekeeper, was a-saying; but she never seed such a queer one as her foreign ladyship; but the Count he do count for something, and is a right down good man, and did all he could to stay her ladyship; and they say he’s going away to his own place in foreign parts.”

“I don’t wonder at that,” said Aunt Jane.

“No, mum; pertickly as, besides the young lords and barrownights that is sweet upon her ladyship, there’s a foreign count, too, as they say she likes the best of ’em all.”

“Could this be Carlo?” I thought, as I suddenly remembered what occurred in the London season. I say remembered, because since my illness many of the stirring events which had occurred to me during the last year, only came back by degrees to my mind.

Poor Carlo!—and now I felt more pity than either anger or love—pity that he should have become ensnared by that syren; but my still dulled senses prevented me from feeling much curiosity to know whether it was really Carlo. All my curiosity, all my best feelings were excited by a longing to know what Norah was doing—whether she would ever forgive Sir Alfred Rivers, whether he could ever become worthy of her.

As I said before, Aunt Jane seemed to evade the subject, as if she still feared that my mind would again break down; and, as I afterwards learnt, she purposely tried to interest me with the village gossip about Castle Hall. She thought it very likely that the ruined portion had long been the haunt of smugglers, for it was only four miles across the country to the coast, although there was no regular road leading to it, without going a round of ten or twelve miles; and she thought that probably some people might be still living who knew the secret of the old passages or vaults under the ruins; and perhaps they might have been still used as a lurking-place for illegal goods, or traffic of some kind.

I FELT rather disappointed at this idea of the ghost of Baron Hugh being, after all, no ghost, but only a trick of the smugglers; and disposed to be angry with Aunt Jane for her matter-of-fact way of viewing the apparition.

“Surely,” I said, “if ever a sinner deserved to walk the earth after death—and even in Plato’s days such ghosts were said to appear—Baron Hugh, after desecrating the old church, and drinking himself to death, is doomed to haunt it evermore.”

“But I don’t think it was Baron Hugh at all. I gathered, from some words the blind dame involuntarily uttered, that it was a lady, a beautiful, pale, fair young lady, like her favourite Lady Alice.”

“Oh! did she? What, the one she was anxious to know whether Dorina was like? Well, that is strange.”

“Yes; but remember to say nothing of it,” she whispered, “to anyone else, for the poor woman seemed much afraid of having let out some dangerous secret. You, too, remarked how disinclined she has become lately to speak about the family at all, and how anxious she looked.”

“Yes, but happy, too, as if she had discovered something that had pleased her, or made her pleasantly anxious.”

At the moment we spoke about the supposition that the ghost was a lady, a half-witted and deaf old man was passing near, and when I happened to look round a few minutes afterwards, I saw that he was following us. He did not live in the village, but he sometimes came there to sell fish and shrimps; once he had been at Roland Grange with herrings, and Aunt Jane fancied that he was not so deaf or silly as he pretended to be, for his head was well-shaped, although his eyes had rather a vacant stare. When I looked back, he came up and offered us some shrimps, which Aunt Jane declined to purchase.

We were walking in the direction of Dame Jestico’s cottage, and the man still contrived to follow us, even after we had left the high road, and turned into the path across the fields. Aunt Jane turned round and told him that it was useless for him to bring his shrimps to the cottages, for the poor people would certainly not buy any. But she could not succeed in making him hear or understand. So she let him take his course, at the same time that she felt sure he had some motive in pretending deafness or stupidity.

When we entered the cottage the man sat down on a bench in the porch outside, and putting his basket of fish on the ground, leaned back, and stretched out his legs with a wearied and listless air. We found the little grand-daughter was with the old dame, and Aunt Jane told her to go and see what the man wanted.

“Who is it? Surely I know that step! It ’minds me of long, long ago!” asked the dame. And when Aunt Jane explained, she seemed much agitated, and was going to speak several times, but checked herself, with an apparently violent effort. She then endeavoured to get up from her chair, and moved in the direction of the porch. Aunt Jane supported her, and, as she seemed so anxious to approach the deaf man, we endeavoured to assist her tottering steps.

“Who are you?” she inquired, as she groped along the bench with her hand till she reached his shoulder. She then passed it quickly over his face, and felt a mark of an old scar on his forehead. “I thought you had died fifteen years ago,” she exclaimed. “And what has brought you here now?”

The man gave no answer, but looked as if he were trying to conceal the annoyance he felt at her recognition.

“Come, come,” she said, in the same tone, “tell me what you want, or I’ll——”

“I don’t want nothin’ at all, only to see if old friends remembered me.”

“What have you done with Eleanor? Tell me quick. Tell me at once, or, if you don’t, I’ll punish you.”

“I’ll tell ye, then, if you promise not to betray me, for in these parts I’m Joe Naylor, and you would spoil an honest man’s livelihood, what’s been wrong in his head ever since this blow,” he said, pointing to the mark on his forehead.

“I don’t believe you,” said the dame, “for well do I know how you came by that; but I promise not to say I know you, if you will tell me truly what you did with your poor wife.”

“She’s sleeping sound and peaceful in the deep blue sea,

And with a wild kind of startling laugh, the strange man jumped up and ran away.

“Is he mad, or what can he want?” inquired Aunt Jane of the old dame, who stood listening intently to his receding footsteps, which she seemed to hear long after they were inaudible to us.

“He’s gone up the wood-path, and no doubt will prowl about his old haunts on the Castle-hill.”

“Was he one of the smugglers who were said to have had their hiding-places there?”

“Who said he was?” inquired the dame, with an angry look. “I never said so, and come what will, I will never betray poor Eleanor’s husband. Beg pardon, dear lady, I’m forgetting myself; but my poor mind wanders, I know, sometimes, and now I’ll go and rest.”

We saw that she evidently did not like to speak about this mysterious man, so we led her back to her chair, and soon afterwards left her to repose.

As we walked home, we could not help wondering what the strange man’s motives could have been in thus seeking for the old dame’s recognition, and before strangers, too, when he seemed, at the same time, so anxious to be known only under his present evidently feigned name of Joe Naylor. But as the dame evidently wished that he should keep up this incognito, we determined to say nothing about our meeting with him to anyone.

AS we heard long afterwards where the strange Joe Naylor went after quitting the old dame’s cottage, I will now follow his footsteps to the old Castle-hill. Proceeding by a narrow path which led through thick woods towards the Castle (in which direction the dame had heard his tread) for about a mile, he suddenly left it, and turned into the park, where the underwood was very thick, and no path was discernible. Up a steep hill he slowly climbed, feeling on the ground at every second step for some stones, which might have been placed there long ago to indicate some path; but most of them were partly covered with either moss or fern, so that he was some time before he reached the highest part of the hill, where there was a little open space, and the remains of some burnt wood, as if left by a gipsy encampment. He felt the heap of ashes, and finding some warmth in them, he gave a shrill whistle. After a few moments, it was answered by another, when he proceeded in the direction whence the sound came, thereby giving good proof that his deafness was only feigned.

Under a projecting rock he found two men and a woman, apparently of the gipsy tribe. He then said, with an air of command, “Follow me!”

“Not dark enough yet,” said the elder of the men, with a sulky look. “I’m not going to risk my life after a fool’s errand—not till I knows what’s to be got by it.”

“I explained it to Dick there,” he replied, in a better accent than was usually spoken by the country people; “so don’t lose the precious moments loitering here. ‘Come, them as knows they knows,’ you used to say, old Rupert, when I showed ye the cutter off Forland Head; and you got a pretty penny for your pains.”

“Yes, that ’ere was a good job. Well, master, I’ll agree to follow. But, mind, you promised me half of the booty. But there’s more risk than you’d a-knowed of, for Sarah heard that carpenters and people are at work in the house.”

“Who said that?” inquired Joe Naylor; for as he had not been in this part of the country until that day since the Countess arrived at the Castle, he knew nothing of the repairs now in progress. “Who said it?—Tell me quick!” he repeated.

“Sarah heard it last night down at the ‘Three Hats.’ They’re going to give a grand ball, or summut, and got lots of workmen making preparations.”

“Well, now we’ll go round by the lower park wood, and not go near the old entrance till we see the workmen are gone.”

Then they descended the hill, and made a detour by the lower woods, till they came to a place which commanded a view of the fine old ruins, as well as the extensive pile of later buildings at its base. The sun had now set, but there was sufficient light to see the numerous entrances to the house, and stables, and various outbuildings and gardens.

Soon afterwards they saw a line of workmen emerge from a small gate on the western side, and just afterwards a gay party in carriages, accompanied by some gentlemen on horseback, followed by grooms, came out of the opposite wood, and approached the principal entrance.

“My eye, what a lot o’ people; and look at all them powdered varlets in livery! The gents in plush, that come to the door, have better dresses than the quality on horseback. What if they could see us? However could we get safe away?” inquired Dick.

“Never fear; we’re not going near the house where they all live.”

“But it joins on to them there ruins—I sees it do.”

“Yes; but that part is not inhabited; and nobody goes near it for fear of old Baron Hugh’s ghost. And I overheard by chance this very day that the lady herself saw it, and nearly died of fright. Come, now, for we shall have some way to go round by the Devil’s Bridge up there, and so round to the north side of the ruins.”

It took nearly an hour to reach this spot, as there was no way of crossing a stream which ran down from the old deer park through a ravine, and then skirting the base of the Castle, flowed in a clear rapid stream along the western terrace garden, and formed a beautiful lake in the centre of the park.

The Devil’s Bridge consisted now of only bare rough planks across the deep chasm; but overhead was a massive broken arch, which had been the chief entrance to the feudal castle. It had apparently been blown up in the wars; and the massive masonry of the centre part lay on the side of the steep hill near the present bridge of planks, and it was so perfect that, if it could have been lifted up some twenty feet, it would have exactly joined, and fitted the two sides which still projected over the ravine.

“Sure and they built finely in them there old times. I don’t think as how there’s a man living as could make stones stand up o’ their own selves like them split arches. They look for all the world as if they must fall down upon us, and yet they’ve never budged an inch, I know, for hundreds of years.”

“Come on quick, now, and don’t speak, for there’s an echo here,” said Joe Naylor, as he led them up the steep and pathless side of the Castle-hill.

It was nearly dark, and the rocks were in some places perpendicular, and their sides only broken by narrow patches of mossy grass, along which the party were obliged to grope their way one after the other, for, in some places, there was barely room for one person to stand.

“I knew we should want more light for this work,” Joe said, as the others began to grumble at the difficulty and danger of their slippery position. “You’ll say again that ‘them as knows they knows!’ before we’re done, for you would insist on waiting till those stupid workmen were gone away.”

“Is there no other way at all to your old gate?—and however did you get the kegs and barrels along this here strip o’ slippery moss? ’Tis not wide enough just here for a cat, let alone a Christian what’s fat! Dick’ll be sure to scrape his lusty sides agin this sharp rock. Look, man, how we gets round it, for I’ve hit my nose as a’most stunned me. And how much further are we to climb like cats on a wall?”

“Only round the next point; and, here, hold on, for I’ve found the very same rope as used to serve us to swing round the black rock corner. Right glad am I to find it here still, as it shows that the old gate has never been discovered; but don’t lean on it too hard, as maybe it’s rotten by this time.”

They did not immediately swing round the point, but, after Joe had tried its strength, and reached the old entrance-gate on the other side of the rock, he threw it back to each in succession, and it served to steady their footsteps round the narrowest and most dangerous part of the way. They then crept on all fours for some distance, under the narrow entrance of a rocky cave, where Joe struck a light.

“Now you may stand upright, while I try the key in the old lock.”

It was so rusty that they had great difficulty in turning it. But at length it yielded to their efforts, and on opening the door they found themselves at the top of a narrow flight of winding stairs. The steps were broken in many places, so that the descent was not very easy, but by the aid of a lantern which they had now lighted, they slowly went down ninety-five steps. Joe reckoned them aloud as they went down, but they had not reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Stop here now, and hold the lantern close to this wall. All right, the plaster is still just where I laid it on the last time I was here, and the mark too,” he muttered to himself, as he hastily struck at the plaster with a small hatchet, when the letters L D were visible to his quick eye.

After all the plain coating of plaster had been knocked off, a strong oak door became visible, and taking out another key, he applied it to the lock. It opened at once, and they found themselves in a large space, so large that the light of the lantern did not show anything, save the doorway through which they passed, and the stone floor under their feet. They proceeded close along the wall for some twenty feet, and then a colonnade of massive pillars, surmounted by round arches, became visible; and leaving the outer wall on their right, they passed through the middle of one of the colonnades, till they reached what seemed to be an ancient altar tomb with a recumbent figure on the top. It was a knight in armour, and the crossed legs showed that he must have been a crusader.

Joe Naylor explained to his companions this interesting fact, and thereby excited their admiration for what they called his wonderful book-learning. But they did not loiter long over the inspection of this or other monuments which they passed, but came to a spot which had been the high altar of this ancient crypt. Near the front of this some of the pavement stones seemed to have been plastered over in the same manner as the staircase door through which they had come, and Joe Naylor applied the instrument he had brought to pick it off, after discovering the same marks of L D in a certain corner.

“All right!” he exclaimed, with great glee; “now we must all work hard to get up the stone.”

This was not easy, for it was large and extremely heavy, and after working at it for nearly an hour, they declared that it would be impossible to lift it without more hands.

“There was no one about we could trust, and Sarah would not have been o’ much use if we had let her come,” said Joe.

“Ay, but she would though; she’s far stronger than most men, and so clever-like, she’d a-hit on some way o’ getting it up.”

“Here, try this,” said Joe, who had found some old oak planks, probably the remains of coffins; “put this end under, and we’ll all stand at the other end, and see if we can’t hoist it up.”

By dint of hard labour they gradually succeeded in lifting the stone, and then a flight of steps became visible. Joe kindled another light, for the foul, damp air which came up from the vaults beneath nearly extinguished the lantern.

“Bah! then it’s among the dead bodies we’re going,” muttered Dick. “Sure, but I hope we may find the treasure at last; and, my eye, if it’s not full of coffins!”

“Yes, and a good number we shall have to lift, before we get to the right one.”

“But it has not got a dead body in it—Joe, has it?” inquired Dick, who was all of a tremble, as he afterwards confessed, so that you might have knocked him down with a feather, for it was the dismallest place he ever sat eyes on—scattered bones on the ground, and coffins in every stage of ruin and decay. When they reached the further end they found a pile of some dozen coffins placed one above the other. Joe approached the light to the sides, and reckoning nine from the top, looked eagerly for a mark on the side of the tenth.

“All right,” he again said, rubbing his hands with glee. “Now we must lift all the others off, for this is the one.”

“But surely we’re not going to carry that ’ere coffin the steep path we came up?”

“Not such a fool as that, my man:—Here, see the bags I brought to hold the gold.”

ON hearing of gold, the men began to work hard, and soon the nine coffins were lifted down. Just as they were about to wrench the top off the tenth, a wailing sound was heard, which so frightened Dick that he let the light fall, and would have run off, even without the gold, if he could have found the way.

“What a fool you are!” said Joe. “It’s only a bat. I’ve heard such a sound many a time here.”

“But it was like a body suffering—just for all the world like a Christian voice.”

“Nonsense!—light the other candle again, and look sharp.”

Poor Dick rather expected to see a dead body with some valuable diamonds on it, but his delight was extreme when he saw hundreds of gold and silver pieces, and a great quantity of copper.

“Here, men, quick! pick out the silver, and I’ll reckon over the gold.”

“But we’re to have half,” exclaimed both the men—“that was the bargain.”

“Yes, and so you shall; but we must first separate and reckon them over.”

The men began to collect the silver, but kept their eyes principally on the gold pieces that Joe told over as he placed them in one of his bags.

“Two hundred and fifty good golden guineas,” said Joe, as he tied it up, and began to fill another. “Two hundred and fifty more,” he soon afterwards repeated; “and here’s twenty more—ten for each bag; and you ought to have got seventy pounds in silver.”

But they had been so eagerly watching the gold pieces that they had neglected to reckon the silver.

“Yes, I know there must be, for the gold is all right, and nobody has been here. So we’ll put the silver in the two other bags, and each of you shall carry one.”

“Well, but we shall carry one gold too—that’s but fair.”

“Very well, so you shall; you’ve got thirty-five pounds in each of the bags of silver, and here is two hundred and fifteen pounds in gold, divided in two bags, for each of you to carry one.”

The men watched the division with such a greedy earnestness visible on their rough faces that Joe cautioned them not to quarrel about it, as they’d be sure to get into trouble.

“And now I’ll see if the way is clear above, that we may get on a better road than we came up by, for we should never be able to climb along those slippery rocks with all this weight in our hands.”

“And ours the heaviest load too, which ain’t fair,” said the older man, with a dogged, sullen look, as he remembered the perilous descent. “Come, sir, hand me out some o’ them guineas in exchange for the silver and copper.”

Joe Naylor consented, as he saw the fierce expression on the man’s face, and a further division took place.

“Now, then, place the lid on, and I’ll see if I can find the way into the place overhead.”

He then led them up from the vault, and across the crypt to a small narrow archway which opened into a winding staircase. It was even more ruinous than the one by which they had descended, and was closed at the top by a flat kind of massive trap-door. Joe touched a spring at the side, and told the others to push hard. After a vigorous effort, it flew open, and a rumbling noise was heard, as if stones were rolling off from its top on to the rest of the pavement.

“Hush!—give me the light,” whispered Joe; “and don’t speak, for sure we’re close to the house now. And what on earth has happened? Why, there’s a floor above our heads, or the old chapel has fallen down. Why, there’s not room to stand upright; and we ought to be in the grand old chapel, or banqueting-hall, as they call it.”

It was true, a floor raised about four feet above the uneven and ruined stone floor of the old chapel had been raised, and thus there was no possibility of getting out that way.

“It’s lucky we left the trap-door wide open, for if we had shut it, the spring would have caught, and we should have been buried alive between these floors. But, look!—what’s this?” he said, pointing to a large diamond-shaped place that seemed as if it could be easily opened just above their heads; and, on feeling it round with a chisel, they found it could be raised. In so doing they unconsciously removed with their shoulders some of the supports, on one side, which kept it in its place, and emerging into the room above, they hastily replaced the large square, which they saw was a beautiful piece of inlaid woodwork, without taking the trouble to see that it was done so securely.

“Oh! my, what a grand place!”

“Hush!—don’t make a noise,” whispered Joe. “Come along—quick, or we may be heard.”

They cast a rapid glance over the hall, which had been beautifully restored; and their lights were just sufficient to show the outline of the elaborately-carved old gallery, with its curious corner oriel. Joe held up his lantern in order to throw some light on that gallery, which he had had the good taste to admire much in days long gone by, when, to his surprise and horror, he saw a white figure, a pale lovely face looking down upon them. The next moment it had disappeared, but Dick was so frightened that he let the light and his money-bag fall on the floor; and was on the point of shrieking with terror, when Joe’s hand was laid heavily on his mouth. But Joe’s hand trembled too, for the apparition was exactly like one of the family pictures in the hall of the good Baroness who died in defending the castle from Cromwell’s army.

“Well, now I have seen a ghost,” thought he; “for no living being could look like that. Come,” he whispered to Dick, who still continued to tremble and quake; “pick it all up, and quick—let’s be gone.”

“Oh! dear, oh! dear,” muttered Dick; “if I ever get safe out of this old place, I’ll——”

“Don’t speak,” insisted Joe, as he motioned to the men to follow him along the wall in the direction of the gallery. “We must go under it,” he explained, as he saw that both the men shrank from going near to the spot above which the strange apparition had been seen. “There’s no other way out; and if it’s been stopped up, we’re done for,” said Joe, who began to consider it was possible, as the banqueting-hall had been so wonderfully renovated. Then he found the arch which had formerly contained an old broken door, but, to his dismay, he saw it had been built up. He then examined the windows, which, from the level of the floor having been raised, were now nearer to it than formerly; and near one of these, which seemed to be still under the process of repair, he saw a ladder. This he cautiously mounted, and found that some of the panes of glass were not yet put in.

There was a buttress outside by which he thought they could clamber down without displacing the ladder, which might betray their nocturnal visit to the restored room. So he told the others to follow, and they all three reached the ground in safety.

There was here but a narrow strip of grass between the walls and the rocky precipice, but Joe assured them it would soon get wider, and then they could return through the wood without having to clamber down the steep by which they had ascended. When they at last reached the wood, Joe Naylor turned to his two companions, and, with many cautions, told them not to quarrel over their booty, and to be sure and tell Sarah exactly what they had got.

Before they had time, even if they had inclination, to thank him for his advice, he disappeared. The two men wondered for a few moments why he so suddenly left them, and felt their money-bags to see if they were all safe. Finding this was the case, they did not take his departure much to heart, for he puzzled and somewhat awed them. We are all prone to dislike what we cannot understand.

THE preparations for the grand masquerade ball were now nearly complete, and the neighbourhood, as well as the highest portions of the Morning Post world, in those days of the reign of fashion, were in the greatest excitement. Hairdressers from London and Paris obtained fabulous prices for their promise to attend some of the chief houses in the country; and London dressmakers were busily employed on the magnificent dresses belonging to the most golden periods of the world’s history.

But these grand preparations had run a great risk of being marred by a panic which gradually developed itself among the servants at the Castle. It was said to be positively haunted by a ghost. Strange to say, it was not the appearance of the wicked Baron Hugh, or there might have been some excuse for their fears. The apparition which excited their terror was that of a young and beautiful woman, who was said to haunt different parts of the house with her pale and melancholy countenance. The Countess’s own Italian ladysmaid, Cattarina Diabelli—or Catering Devilry, as she was sometimes called by the servants, who dreaded her violent temper—seemed frightened out of her wits by this mysterious visitor. She had never known a night’s rest since the Countess’s fright in the old chapel. She, and an English ladysmaid who acted under her orders, had sat up all that night with their lady, at the Count’s request; and Cattarina had understood, from the wild, dreamlike raving of her mistress, that the ghost which had appeared on the old carved balcony was that of the Count’s first wife, as she was generally called—the lovely and ill-fated Dorina, who met with her untimely end the very evening before her bridal-day.

Cattarina Diabelli, although violent in temper, and not over-honest, had a great respect for her religion, and she considered this appearance of the ghost to have been a warning to the Countess against her sacrilegious intention of making a ball-room of the old chapel. And she ventured to speak her mind on the subject to her ladyship.

But after the sound sleep which succeeded Cunigunda’s wild ravings, she became insensible to the danger, and tried to make herself and others believe that it could have been only fancy, or that she saw a bat in a strip of moonlight on the quaint figures of the old carving.

But Cattarina was naturally superstitious, and felt convinced that her lady had really seen Dorina’s ghost. Whether this idea gained complete hold on her imagination, or that she really saw something, was never ascertained; but she told the butler, in strict confidence, that one night, as she was passing the end of the passage which led to the Countess’s room, she saw a white figure approach the door of her room. After standing there a few seconds, it turned slowly round, and she saw the face quite plain.

It was ghastly pale, and seemed to have a kind of unearthly light in it, but lovely too, and exactly like the picture of the celebrated beauty, Baroness Alice, whose picture by Vandyck hung over the chimney-piece in the blue drawing-room. And Cattarina had heard that the unfortunate Dorina was said to be the image of that beautiful picture. Of course this story soon spread among all the other servants, and all said they had seen the pale lady and heard her moans.

“I heard the footsteps, too, quite plain,” said the upper housemaid, “a-coming along the hattic passage, and groans like a body crying their eyes out; and I was too frightened to look, but I heard it stop at my door and the lock turn as plain as I hear that ’ere knife as you’re sharpening; and I’m sure she came into my room, but I was so terribly terrified I hid my head in the clothes, and never looked up till I fell asleep.”

“Then you did not see it after all?”

“No, thank goodness gracious, for I’m sure the fright would have killed me outright, and I must have given warning this very morning.”

“What, after you was killed?” said the solemn-looking matter-of-fact butler.

“Ah, it is all very well for a strong man like you to laugh at a lady’s fears (the man had the gravest of faces, and was never known to smile except when he attended his uncle’s funeral, who had left him a legacy), but if you heard the groans, and saw what Judy did through the window that looks into the dead-room, you’d shake in your shoes, I know you would,” she continued in a loud and angry tone.

“Hey-day, what’s all this about?” inquired the stately old housekeeper, who sailed into the room in her stiff and rustling petticoats and fine lace cap. “What nonsense is this you have all got into your foolish heads about a ghost? Now, if ever I catch any of you talking of such silly things I’ll speak to master, and you shall have warning.”

“Well, mum,” said Judy, who had been listening from the next room, “that’s what we fear we must all do, for really I’ve had no sound sleep this week past, afraid to open my eyes after I gets into bed, and hearing strange sounds all night.”

“And then oversleeping yourself in the morning.”

“Well, mum, it ain’t me alone; there’s Mrs. Spinnyfit, the under ladysmaid, as heard her ladyship the Countess telling Cattarina, and say she’d seen the ghost.”

“That she could not, for I’m sure the Countess did not speak it in English.”

“Well, mum, and there’s John Harris—he declared he saw the ghost standing at those ruined windows up in the old castle in the middle of the night, and——”

“And what business had he to be out at that time, I wonder?” said Mrs. Lacy, with a still more severe look.

“And the under-footman, he said as how he saw lights flittering about up at the very top window of the highest tower,” said the persevering Judy.

“And what did the ghost want with a light up there?” said the provoking, incredulous housekeeper.

“I don’t know, I’m sure; but I’ve heard as how no Christian mortal could get up to that door, seeing as how there bain’t no staircase up to it, so it must have been something terrible. And I’ll swear I’ve seen a light pass under my door, when I’ve heard no footstep at all.”

“What nonsense! Why, Mrs. Spinnyfit said it was the footsteps frightened her to death.”

In spite, however, of the housekeeper’s sage reasonings, the servants’ fears went on increasing day by day; and even the grave-looking butler began to be alarmed, for he confessed he was awoke the night before by somebody trying to open the door of his room; and fearing it might be a robber, as he kept some of the plate up there, he got his pistols out before he ventured to open the door.

At last he opened it cautiously, and seeing no one, he looked all along the passage, when he distinctly saw a white figure at the further end. He thought he would be very brave and try to follow it, but before he could reach the further end of the passage it had disappeared. He could not tell how or where, for the only door at that end was locked, and only led into the ruined and uninhabited part of the old building.

A serious strike among all the servants now seemed imminent, and even the ladysmaids of the visitors who were staying in the house, declared that they could stand it no longer, and they knew that their own ladies were frightened out of their wits too, for Lady Selina Bugginfield rang for her maid twice the night before, and declared that somebody was hidden in the room, for she had heard footsteps going round her bed. The house-keeper was obliged to ask for an audience of the Countess, in order to explain the embarrassing situation of affairs.

Cunigunda seemed much annoyed when she heard it, and, as the housekeeper afterwards confessed, looked considerably alarmed. She said that she herself should leave the house a day or two after the fête, but that nothing would induce her to put it off, so Mrs. Lacy must try to induce the servants to remain till then.

“Well, my lady, I’ll see what can be done, but——”

“But what?” said the angry Countess; “it must—it shall be done!”

“I’ll try then, but I was going to say that I feared, if by chance your ladyship saw what they all say they have seen, it would make you as ill again as you were that night, and——”

“Never fear. I know what I am about, so make them stay till after the ball, and you, too, shall be well paid.”

“No, my lady,” said the housekeeper, drawing herself up with a sort of minuet-de-la-cour dignity of air—“no, indeed, I do not require to be bribed to do my duty after sixty years’ service.” So saying, with a low curtsey, she sailed out of the room, and left the Countess alone.

ALONE!—how often our angry wishes to be left “alone” are literally and direfully realized. At this moment Cunigunda felt almost for the first time in her life a sensation of utter loneliness. Her husband seemed completely estranged from her; and Carlo, whose agreeability and evident admiration for her had served for a time to distract and amuse, seemed to have lost his charm. She was tired of everything and everybody, yet she dreaded, above all things, to be alone.

The interview with the old housekeeper had taken place in the blue drawing-room, which, from being upstairs, was not used in the mornings; and as she sat leaning back listlessly in an easy-chair, she happened to be just opposite Vandyck’s beautiful picture of Baroness Clotilda-Jane.

The eyes of the portrait seemed to gaze down upon her with a melancholy earnestness that was quite distressing, and she hastily rose and went towards a curious cabinet at the farther end, as if to escape from their searching expression. But there was a fascination in the picture that seemed to prevent her from removing her gaze from it; and she saw that the eyes followed her about the room with the same melancholy and reproachful look.

“It must be her spirit,” she thought. “Her life was unhappy, they say; and she came to some untimely end. Oh! why did I come into this room?” she suddenly thought. “I cannot stand that living look!” And she ran wildly out into the outer gallery, as if she felt some evil spirit were pursuing her, and never stopped till she reached the billiard-room downstairs, where she found Carlo and some other gentlemen lounging over a game.

A few minutes after the Countess had left the blue drawing-room, it was entered by the Count, who walked up to the picture which had so strangely excited his wife. He moved towards it with an air of reverence and awe; while his handsome features expressed a passionate love, mingled with respectful admiration. His thoughts, while he gazed at the picture, assumed the form of some such words as these:

“Yes, it is her living self—the same soft loving eyes of heavenly blue; the smiling dimples in her glowing cheek. She seems to smile down upon me as Dorina did; and yet those arched brows could knit in holy anger, too, at all that was base or mean. What a likeness to that perfect angel! But I outraged her memory, and could fall into the snares—It is too horrible!” he thought, as he covered his face with his hands. “I am not worthy to look upon her likeness. But, oh! forgive me, dear saint! Look down from thy heavenly state with pity on one who adores you more than ever. Ha! what sound was that? It was like her voice—the cry of agony that seemed to reach my ears when—” He turned round suddenly, for the sound seemed to proceed from the farther end of the room. There seemed to be no door, but on feeling along the blue damask hangings, his hand came upon a hard projection, as of the handle of a lock; feeling round it, he found what seemed to be the frame of a door.

Then he listened with breathless anxiety, for the voice seemed to have come from that spot; and now he fancied he heard a gentle breathing, and rustling, as of a dress.

“Who is there?” he inquired. No answer came, but he thought he heard light footsteps receding gradually into the distance.

He then determined to inquire of the old housekeeper whether there was formerly any passage through the seeming doorway, and to what it could have led. He rang the bell in haste, but it was some time before it was answered, for the servants had been summoned into the upper housekeeper’s room, and she was at that moment endeavouring to carry out the Countess’s wishes, and trying to make the best terms she could to induce them to remain till after the masquerade. The Count rang again, and he was answered by the solemn butler, who looked much less grave than usual, for he had just succeeded in making a profitable bargain for himself with Mrs. Lacy.

“I want to see the housekeeper. Beg Mrs. Lacy to come to me here.”

“Yes, sir; but she’s a-talking to the females now, as she’s just settled with the gentle—the men-servants.”

“What do you mean? Settled what?”

“Didn’t you know, my Lord Count, that we was all a-going to leave—couldn’t stand it no longer?”

“Stand what any longer?”

“The ghost, my lord.”

“The ghost! Are you mad?”

“The White Lady, sir—my Lord Count—what frightened the Countess herself out of her senses in the old chapel.”

“She said afterwards it was mere fancy, or an owl, or something.”

“Ah! but we all a-seen it since.”

“Seen what? How can you be such fools? Send Mrs. Lacy at once, that I may inquire from her the reason of all this.”

“Yes, sir; but, please, my Lord, she don’t believe in the ghost at all.”

“I should think not. Go, then, and ask her to come to me here immediately.”

The butler retired rather crestfallen, and somewhat ashamed of having showed that he was afraid of a ghost in which his master evidently did not believe.

Mrs. Lacy soon appeared, making her very best curtsey, while a most benign and reverential expression gradually banished the angry frown of injured dignity which had been so excited by the rebellious domestics. For she honoured the Count, and although she had never seen him till six weeks ago, she already began to love him, and to feel the greatest interest for him.

“What would you please to want?” she inquired, after a few moments, for she found him gazing so intently on Baroness Clotilda’s portrait that she began to think he had not seen her enter.

He turned round suddenly, and then looked at her with a kind of searching expression, mingled with an interest and kindness which she had never before remarked. In fact, he had always appeared so pre-occupied and indifferent that she fancied he had never remarked her at all before.

“You have been many years in this family, I suppose?” he said.

“Seventy-two years come next Christmas. I came into the service of her Ladyship’s great-grandmother.”

“Then you remember the Lady Alice, who married Count Hohenstein?”

“That I do indeed, for she married the very next Spring; and a fine wedding we had, and she the most beautiful and, more, the very best and kindest of ladies.”

“And was she like that portrait?” he inquired, pointing to the Vandyck.

“As like as if it was painted for her, only her hair was lighter. ’Twas a most lovely auburn, that looked as if it was full of sunshine. Indeed, we used often to say ’twould light up a room in the dark, it was so bright and gay, and fell in such loving, waving curls that seemed to twine round our very hearts; and, indeed, there was not a dry eye for miles round the day she left us. And I did use to think the family wasn’t quite—— The old earl, her ladyship’s father, took it so to heart that he never seemed the same man afterwards; and as to my lady, she—— But it ill beseems me to say anything against them, only somehow ’twas a different house afterwards, and my mother was sorry she’d let me come here so young.”

“The Lady Alice had exerted a great influence over all her family. I suppose she was a sort of guardian angel?”

“That’s just the word, my lord, for nobody could look on her beautiful face without feeling better—indeed, one felt quite ashamed of not being more worthy, or, as poor Lady Jane used to say, ‘more in harmony with its sweet look.’”

“Just like her!” said the Count, half to himself; “and she never came back from Italy to see her parents?”

“Alack-a-day! none of us ever set eyes on her saint-like face again, more’s the pity; for if she had, then I don’t think her sister, Lady Matilda, would have married contrary to my lord’s wishes. I suppose you heard, my lord, that she ran away with a gentleman that was not worthy of her? And Lord Castleglen, he went contrairy too, and took to play, and lost no end of money; but, as I said before, it ill becomes me to go against the family; and then, to be sure, the old Earl’s grandson, he married a dear, good lady, though she’d no fortune, and we had nothing to keep up the place, for, my lord, he entertained all the quality and the Royal Family, when they came to Weyford; and the King and Queen, and the fair young Princesses, used to come sometimes unexpected-like, and we had used to get banquets ready, and to send—— But then Lord Castleglen, the eldest son, married a great heiress, so they came round again, only the lady herself was not so—But, my lord, I’m tiring your lordship with all this?”

“No—on the contrary, I like to hear about them all; pray go on.”

“Well, there is not much more to tell, for you know that the last Earl, my lord, son and daughter, died and left no children; and so there was a long minority, and we lived in expectation of—— But, my lord, you know all this far better than I do; only we did long for—excuse me, I ought not to remind you of what——”

She stopped short, for the look of agony which passed over the Count’s expressive face excited the old lady’s honest sympathy, and she thought to herself—“How deeply he must have loved the Lady Dorina!”

“I like to think—I like to talk of her to you, who remember her great-grandmother so well, for all you said of Lady Alice, and more—much more might be said of my betrothed wife; and how I ever could—— But stay,” he said, restraining himself with a sudden violent effort—“stay—I want to ask you whether there was ever a door there at that further end, to the right of Baron Hugh’s picture?”

The housekeeper started, and a puzzled, anxious, and embarrassed look was visible on her face.

“There is some mystery attached to that door, I suppose,” he said, surprised at her evident embarrassment.

Mrs. Lacy seemed to ponder deeply for a few moments, and then she said, with a candid and decided air:

“Yes, my lord, there is a mystery; and I would rather, if you would forgive me—I would rather not speak about it; in fact, I have given a solemn promise not to do so, and——”

“I will ask no more,” he said, “for I am sure you will not keep back anything that I ought to know.”

“Perhaps I have been wrong, my lord; but I did it for the best, and a promise is a promise.”

“Yes,” said the Count, who read plainly in her honest face that she was only doing what she thought right.

“But I will tell you why I ask the question, and why I asked you to come here. I fancied I heard a voice or moan, as if some person were suffering at that end of the room, and on approaching it I distinctly heard light footsteps receding in the distance; so light, so—but never mind, I felt along this damask hanging, and see, here is plainly the handle and lock of a door.”

Mrs. Lacy felt the spot, but her hand trembled with agitation, and she could scarcely speak or even stand.

“Sit down,” said the Count, as he placed her in one of the large old-fashioned chairs which were said to have come from the Doge’s Palace at Venice. “And do not speak, do not think it necessary to give any explanation of them, or the slightest reason against it.”

“You are most kind; I never can be grateful enough. Oh, sir, if I could but speak, how glad I should be! Perhaps some day I may be able,” she continued after a pause, while her countenance brightened with sudden hope as she got up and walked towards the window. “But there are things which—if your lordship did but know what people say——”

“What—what do you mean?”

“Perhaps I can show you, and may God forgive me if I am doing wrong! Please to come this way, my lord,” she said, as she went to the other end of the room, and touching a spring in the top of the dedo under the damask hanging, a door opened. Stooping under the old blue damask, they found themselves in a large old-fashioned bedroom. A high oriel window opened into one of the back courtyards, but the old dame, motioning him to be silent, led him to another smaller window which looked into the old orangery. It was entirely covered on the outside with flowery creepers, so that it was not visible from the other side.

IN the meantime the Countess, as I said before, had left the blue room in an unusually sad or perhaps rather ennuyé state of mind, utterly dissatisfied with everything and everybody, and in great want of some new distraction.

Finding Carlo in the billiard-room, she motioned to him to come and take a walk with her. “And do amuse me with something, for I seem to be suddenly tired of the world and everything in it.”

“That’s because you have everything you wish for,” said he, as he walked on the old south terrace. “If you had to fight your way—if you were poor, and had to gamble or cheat for your bread, it would be different.”

“Yes, I know you hate being poor—you would marry an ugly heiress to-morrow if any were to be had; you care for nothing but riches.”

“I thought you too valued them, else why——”

“Why—what?” she inquired, with a look of surprise.

“Oh, never mind, you know very well there are rumours, and always will be.”

“That I induced the Count to propose to me; well, but that did not increase my riches so very much. You know this property in England is all my own.”

“Yes, but how did it become so?” he inquired, while he fixed his dark penetrating eyes full on hers.

She looked down, and her colour rose. “What can you mean?—and what can you know?”

“What many people in the south know right well. Don’t be frightened, Cunigunda,” he said, with a tender look. “I am not going to repeat it. For I can see you no longer care for Alphonso, and it must be almost punishment enough to have committed a crime, and then to find after all it was the wrong man you married—a man of too cold and unimpassioned a nature ever to appreciate you.”

“Ah, yes, that is true,” she said, with a provoked look. “Yet he did care for me at first. But all men are fickle—no one cares for one long.”

“Oh yes, they do,” he said. “Come, he will take you away soon, and we shall not have many more pleasant talks. Come into my favourite old orangery, and let us have a little peace. All these stiff English people are so fatiguing, and they stare so, whenever I say a word to you, that it is quite disagreeable. Come in here.”

They went and sat down on a bench among the orange-trees, while he passed his arm round her waist to support her as she leant back; and, unforbidden, raised her hand to his lips, which he kissed with tenderness.

“Stay, what is that?” asked Cunigunda, starting up. “I heard some sound up there,” pointing to the high window that looked down from the blue bed-room.

“Probably a bird among the creepers,” said he; “now don’t get frightened and imagine another ghost, for there are none by daylight, and nobody but ourselves ever comes into this tumble-down place.”

“I wish you would tell me openly what you alluded to just now,” she said, “about me, and—what is it you heard?”

“Ah, there are many particulars, known to some and suspected by more,” he said, “by everyone except your weak fool of a husband—that you——”

“Stop, not out loud—” she exclaimed, putting her hand on his mouth, as she burst into a passionate flood of tears.

“Oh, there, brute that I am, I have made you weep!” he said, throwing himself on his knees before her, and taking her hand.

“Who told you?” she rejoined, between her sobs. “Tell me that, and say nothing more.”

He whispered some words in her ear, which seemed to agitate her violently; and then after a pause, during which she wrung her hands as if in agony, she said,

“Well, come away now, for I hate this place; the very air seems full of” (“reproach” was the word in her mind, but in her utterance she hastily changed it into) “poison and misery.”

EARLY in the following week was the day fixed for the masquerade ball, and a number of guests arrived at an early hour. The Count had gone out early in the morning, and the Countess, not being very well, and wishing to repose herself for the evening’s gaiety, sent down word to beg they would excuse her from appearing till the dinner hour.

So the guests strolled into the gardens and amused themselves very well, but some of the ladies held rather aloof from Lady Selina Bugginfield and Mrs. Dashworth, who, as they had been visitors for some time at the Castle, thought it right to patronize the new-comers. But finding it would not do, they went up and sulked in their own rooms, and wrote bitterly gossiping letters to their dear friends.

“This won’t last long,” wrote Lady Selina to her sister that afternoon. “How the husband can be so blind, we none of us can imagine. They go and smoke in an old orangery every day; they have been seen there, and even heard, by some of the servants; in fact, it is well known, and I shan’t be surprised if they elope soon.

“Her adorer is a spendthrift Neapolitan, handsome, certainly, but”—but he remained insensible to my charms, was the parenthesis of her mental bitterness. “Her character is quite gone, if she ever had any, so she will not be much worse after she has left her husband, and with such a spendthrift it scarcely seems worth while; but she has her own fortune, and that I think is the great attraction for him—in fact, I’m sure of it. Poor thing! she will find it out some day.

“The Duke and Duchess of Dromoland, and Lady E. G——, and the great Mrs. de V—— are downstairs. They were obliged to come early to get their hair dressed by Isidore, who came from Paris to dress Cunigunda’s.

“The Duke is very pleasant and nice, and so is Lord D——, but the Duchess and Mrs. de V—— (who I am sure has no character to lose) are disposed to be impertinent to me, and so I came upstairs and took no further notice of them. How insufferably vulgar these great people often are!

“My dress is to be that of a pilgrim from Capo Bosso. I saw one the last time I was in Rome in the Holy Week, and Princess Doria washed her feet. It is the prettiest dress in the world: a blue jacket and cap and very short petticoats, and, as Alfred says, will suit my well-turned ankles and perfect legs. We shall wear masques and dominoes till supper-time, after which there will be a grand polonaise all over the curious old house, and then those who like will remove their masques.

“It will certainly be great fun, and the restored old chapel or banqueting-hall is splendid, where the dancing will be. Such a floor!—all inlaid with flowers and fruit in marqueterie work, like the beautiful old cabinet at D——. But I must dress now, and will finish this to-morrow, and give you some account of the fête, if I am not too tired.

“The party is to break up the following day, which I shall be sorry for. They have an excellent cook, and a very pleasant set of men. There is no drawback but the ghost, of which I told you in my last letter, which frightened all the servants, and then they gave warning. I heard it, too, quite plain, walking round my bed. I can’t bear to think of it; it makes me shudder now—so like the tread of a skeleton!”

WHILE Lady Selina was writing her letter, Cunigunda tried to repose on her sofa, in order that she might be fully equal to the grand ball. But she was rather restless and uneasy. She had remarked a great change in the Count’s manner towards her during the last week. He treated her with a kind of cold politeness which puzzled and mortified her; for of late, since recent interviews with Carlo, some of her former love, mingled with intense pity, revived and tormented her with a kind of remorse.

Quite a new feeling—a vivid remembrance of her past life, of actions which at the time did not seem like crimes—now appeared in a startling light, and her thoughts unfolded themselves into some such words as these: “It was all the effect of that picture in the blue room, and of that face in the gallery. It must have been the effect of the picture, so like her, that made her real face haunt me in that hall! What if I should see it again to-night during the ball! Oh! Dorina, I seem now to wish I had been more like you! I feel that you are happier than I am, or ever shall be. Oh, Dorina! have pity on me! For if there is a God, you must have been made in the image of the divinity, for I can imagine nothing better or more pure. And yet I—I hated you, and—O God! how often I hear your dying cry!—it wakes me in the night; and now, since I came here and saw that old picture, I seem to be continually haunted by her presence, and every look on Alphonso’s face seems to reproach me for depriving him of her.

“Strange I never believed in any hereafter before, and now I feel as if I were doomed to—to what? an eternity of my present state of mind, for no hell could be worse—no torture greater. But it must end. This new torture cannot last. What a fool I am!—I who have always laughed at superstition and prayer, and hated all what are called good people. Why, then, did I ever love Alphonso?—does this show that I could ever, ever become like Dorina? No, for I hate her still—all the more that he loved her, and held her up as an example for me. For me—so superior to her in beauty and—and genius. Yes, I could learn everything without trouble. I know I excelled them all in beauty, but——” and she got up suddenly to look at her own face in the glass. It was, in spite of her unwonted despondency, brilliantly radiant; she looked on it with triumphant admiration, and yet the pale face of the lovely Dorina seemed hovering in the background, gazing at her with a reproachful look.

She turned suddenly round as if she really expected to see the shade of the murdered Dorina. But nothing was there except the Pietra-dura against the wall, and a splendid ball dress which lay extended on the bed behind the spot where she stood.

“Is it all my own fancy?—of course it is. Her spirit does not exist. She can neither know nor feel anything about me. So it must have been fancy when she appeared up in that gallery, because my mind had been so foolishly upset and engrossed by that old picture which is such a wonderful likeness. I’ll have it burnt.”

A knock at the door interrupted the current of Cunigunda’s thoughts, for it was her maid, Cattarina Diabelli, who came to say that M. Isidore was waiting to dress her hair. So she was soon immersed in all the pleasure and labours of her elaborate toilette: for a time Dorina’s image was banished from her mind, and she began to anticipate, with triumphant delight, the glorious fête she had devised.

WHEN the old housekeeper led the Count through the mysterious opening from the blue drawing-room into the old bed-room, which happened to be her own (only she had another approach by which she and others always entered), she had seen the Countess and Carlo walking beneath the windows, and from previous experience knew they were going into the orangery. She had seen them often there before, and so, unfortunately, had some of the housemaids, who had peeped through the creepers which covered the window, and then had spread about scandalous reports among their fellow-servants.

As soon as Mrs. Lacy had seen with her own eyes that the Countess and Carlo used often to come there, she allowed no one to enter her room, and kept the key of it in her pocket. But it occurred to her, as the Count was talking with her about his beautiful lost bride, that he had better know the state of affairs about his present wife, so she suddenly resolved to give him the opportunity.

It was a terrible moment, for he could not avoid overhearing words spoken of himself, to which his wife should not have assentingly listened; and although, without waiting for more, he immediately quitted the room with the housekeeper, he caught a glimpse of them as he turned away, just as Carlo was endeavouring, with a tender embrace, to atone for having frightened the Countess by his words.

“Of course you allow no one to enter that room,” he said to the housekeeper with as much calmness as he could command.

“Here is the key of the only door that is ever used,” she said, as she took it out of her pocket, “and as for this entrance,” (through which they were now passing into the blue drawing-room), “there is not a human being that has known of it for more than fifty years. ’Twas in that room—but now I must return to the housekeeper’s room at once, or they will go wrong.”

The dear old tactful housekeeper had not ventured to look at the Count since the scene she gave him the means of observing, and she indeed felt that he must be left quite alone.

It just occurred to her, as she was leaving the drawing-room, that perhaps he might not wish the great fête to take place; but on second thoughts she felt that nothing could be done at present.

She was right in her surmises, for he had determined not to let this cause, at the last hour, deprive the whole county of their intended amusement; so he resolved to wait till the morning after the ball, when the whole party were to break up, to speak on the subject to his wife.

He did not return home till late in the afternoon of the fête day, only just in time to see the guests before dinner, for he felt quite unequal to play the part of a civil host for an instant more than could be helped.

The ladies had all gone already to make their grand toilettes, so he found only the Duke of Dromoland, and four or five other gentlemen. Though not personally known to them, their good-breeding and pleasant manners did not clash unpleasantly with the sad pre-occupation of his mind.

The Duke observed to his good-humoured wife, he supposed it must be a great bore for a foreigner to have to undergo these kind of country gatherings.

“House turned topsy-turvy,” he said to the Count, as they passed up the great hall; “you only do this kind of thing in towns abroad, I suppose; and your climate, too, is so delightful, you can’t well have much lack of amusement. I remember a Summer we spent at Sorrento some years ago, and I never enjoyed anything more. By-the-by, what has become of that splendid beauty who came from Sorrento, who set everyone mad last season when she went out with Lady Horatia Somerton?”

“Miss Vivian?”

“Yes; by-the-by, your friend Lord Lorrington is breaking his heart because she refused him.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Count, “I did meet her in London, and indeed her mother is a relation of ours; but I don’t know where she is now. I know she had a kind friend in Lady Horatia, but I never heard of her since.”

“Why, don’t you know,” interrupted Mr. Taylour, one of the last arrivals, “she is staying down here with an old lady who is very eccentric, and never goes out or sees anybody at all, and the poor girl is buried alive there?”

“And she is not coming here to-night then?” eagerly inquired the Duke.

“I do not think the Countess was aware of her being in our neighbourhood,” said Count Rossi, “otherwise of course she would have certainly been invited.”

“What a pity, for she is the most beautiful girl I ever saw. Could nothing be done now?”

Mr. Taylour, who overheard this, was on the point of saying that he himself had informed Cunigunda of the presence of her cousin in the next village; but that she most strangely turned a deaf ear to the news, which of course he attributed to jealousy; but not liking to make mischief, he said nothing.

“Could nothing be done?” continued the Duke; “ought not the Countess to be told? But perhaps you would not wish to disturb her,” continued the good-natured Duke, when he saw a look of perplexity on the Count’s face.

“Where’s the Duchess? I’ll tell her, and no doubt she will manage it, for it would never do to lose the presence of such a beauty at the fête.”

THE Duke of Dromoland was then shown to the Duchess’s bedroom; and soon afterwards the Countess was interrupted in her toilette by the entrance of Mrs. Spinnyfit, with a note in the Duchess’s large straggling hand, a gigantic “Immediate” being written on the outside.

Mrs. Spinnyfit had already peeped into the note, for she was fond of reading letters, and having been with the Countess all through the last London season, she was pretty well acquainted with the secret springs which regulated many people’s lives; and on reading this note as she passed through the passages, a mixture of triumph and malice might have been seen on her thin face.

This expression had not subsided when she stood behind her lady and handed the note to the upper ladysmaid, “Madame Catering Devilry.” Cunigunda’s quick eyes detected it between the shining plaits that M. Isidore’s hands were dexterously weaving; and then seeing the Duchess’s bold handwriting with the startling “Immediate,” she hastily opened the note.

It had been well fastened, but the seal being still moist, she was convinced Mrs. Spinnyfit had read it, and that something disagreeable was contained therein. It ran thus:

“What insolent impertinence!” exclaimed the Countess in Italian, but without allowing her face to express her thoughts, for she saw Mrs. Spinnyfit’s eyes twinkling with eager curiosity by the reflection of her face in the glass. So she added in English—

“Go back, Spinnyfit, and tell the Duchess, with my best love, that I am much obliged to her, and shall be charmed to see Miss Vivian this evening, as she so kindly offers to send for her.”

After Mrs. Spinnyfit had gone she made a sign to the ever-attentive Cattarina to see if the door was closed.

The obedient Cattarina did this after looking out in the passage to see that the underladysmaid was fairly out of sight, and then came back to the Countess, who spoke a few words in Italian.

“Capisco,” said the quick-witted Italian, and immediately left the room.

“It would never do,” thought the Countess, as M. Isidore proceeded with her hair. “She was Carlo’s first love, but she shall not regain his heart. And yet,” she continued, after painful thoughts which were too quick to place themselves in words—“why should I care—after what he appears to know——”

At this moment such a look of agony passed over her lovely face that M. Isidore feared he had hurt her head, and apologised for his gaucherie.

“Yes,” she said, “take care, for my hair is very tender.”

But the anxious current of her miserable thoughts remained uninterrupted; however, having great command of countenance, she did not allow them again to appear in the tell-tale looking-glass.

Cattarina did not return for some time, but so absorbed was the Countess in her thoughts that she scarcely missed her.

Mrs. Spinnyfit returned just as the hairdressing was finished, and expected to have the glory and honour of attiring her lady in the magnificent dress. But the Countess said she felt so ill she determined not to go down to dinner, and sent her with a message to that effect to the Duchess and the other ladies. She was going to add also to the Count, but she felt a strange dread of seeing him, and feared that if he thought her really ill he might come to her room.

“I cannot see him alone again to-night,” she thought; “his blue eyes, so like hers, will pierce me through and through. How often they have made me quake with fear lest he should ever know! Poor Alphonso! Oh, that I could be for one half hour like the innocent Dorina, that I might not shrink from his beautiful—yes, his heavenly eyes! But why does this horror oppress me so now? I feel as if something dreadful were going to happen that will awake me; something does now strangely awaken in my mind a kind of remorse—regret—What has thus changed my nature? Can all this horror be produced by the mere sight of a chance likeness in that old picture? Why have I suddenly lost the vivid interest I always felt in my dress and appearance?”

And going to the glass, in order to see if her own lovely face would not revive her drooping spirits, she caught sight of the Duchess’s note—“or the Duke will think I am jealous,” with two large dashes under the I, “which I see plainly means that she thought my jealousy had prevented me from inviting her. Was there ever such impertinence!—and what if Cattarina does not succeed in stopping the carriage, and that the girl comes here! What a position for Carlo, after they had been regularly engaged! Well, there is something exciting about it, and perhaps she will keep on her mask and not make herself known to him. And perhaps—— How strange, I scarcely seem to care. I feel as if I longed for nothing but Dorina’s and Alphonso’s forgiveness. What an odd feeling to begin a ball with! Come, I’ll try to laugh at it, and will not remain alone any longer.”

So, ringing for her maids, she began to dress. Mrs. Spinnyfit answered her bell, saying that Miss Cattarina could not be found. Mr. Snookfield said he saw her go towards the stables half an hour ago, but no one had seen her since.

“I suppose she has gone to walk in the park,” said the Countess, with indifference. “I told her she might go out this evening, as she suffered so much with the heat all day.”

“Yes, my lady, and so have I too; but I wonder that she——”

“Never mind, give me the diamonds; and, see, the fold of the silver lappet wants looping up,” she said, as she surveyed herself in the long looking-glass.

Her costume was somewhat similar to that worn by her at the memorable ball in the caves of Hohenstein, where Dorina had so mysteriously disappeared. A clear silvery gauze floated like wings round her slender form, attached here and there with large single diamonds to a thicker silvery tissue of the under-petticoat. The long tresses of luxuriant dark hair were intertwined with water-lilies, fastened here and there by large diamonds.

When the toilette was completed, she could not help enjoying the loveliness of her appearance in the glass, and at that moment of triumph Cattarina entered the room. After sending Mrs. Spinnyfit to fetch some white camelias from the conservatory, Cattarina whispered in her ear.

“All right; but I had great difficulty, and I was obliged to climb up to the top of the hill to see that I could depend upon my orders being obeyed. I should never have been able to manage it, had I not luckily found a deaf man helping in the stables, against whom I know something which places him in my power, and I know he is clever enough, so I just told him what was wanted, and ordered him, under pretence of showing the Duke’s coachman the way to the Grange, to go with him, and make him drive in quite another direction. As it’s dark now, the old fat coachman, who was sulky enough at having to drive out again, and is half drunk, will never be the wiser. And if the deaf, half-witted man pretends afterwards to be drunk too, we must pay him well.”

“Bravo!” said Cunigunda, who was beginning to regain her usual high spirits. “Now bring me something to eat, and some Champagne and Chartreuse, and I’ll go down and receive the company in the tapestry-room.”

“Yes, I will bring you up a nice dinner, for they will soon begin to arrive, and the ladies will be coming out of the dining-room,” said Cattarina.

The choice meal, and a few glasses of the fragrant wines, still further revived her spirits, and, in her most radiant mood, Cunigunda entered the brilliantly-lighted rooms.

SOON afterwards the guests began to arrive, most of whom were in fancy dresses, which they preferred to show during the first part of the evening, so they left the masks and dominoes in the room prepared for that purpose. But some few wished to remain unknown, and the speculation about who these disguised people were afforded much amusement.

When the tapestry-room was nearly full, the Countess took the Duchess of Dromoland, Prince L——, and a few other grandees, to see the ball-room, as she herself wished to ascertain whether her orders had been fully carried out.

“What a scene of enchantment!” they all exclaimed.

The walls were almost covered with flowers, in graceful devices and shapes, intermingled with light in such a subtle manner, that it was almost impossible to discover how or where the candles or lamps were hid. Besides these decorated walls, festoons of flowers were suspended in every variety of pattern from the roof, containing lights, which were thus shaded from the eyes, while they helped to illuminate the scene.

As I said before, the highly-polished floor was composed of the finest marqueterie work; and gorgeous flowers and fruits ran in borders round medallions of still more elaborate devices.

The other guests soon began to follow; and then the band, which was stationed in a gallery opposite the old carved one (which had remained untouched) struck up a lively waltz.

It was the kind of gorgeous scene Cunigunda loved; and yet the brilliant flowery light reminded her of the ball she had also devised in the caves of Hohenstein. But Prince L——, who opened the ball with her, was a first-rate waltzer, as well as a devoted admirer, and his pleasant talk, and the admiration she saw depicted on all the faces as she flew along, soon restored her spirits.

Carlo’s turn came next, and he asked her, with a somewhat anxious look, which she saw he endeavoured to conceal, whether it was true, as the Duchess had said at dinner, that Miss Vivian had been sent for.

“I suppose so,” she said, with some embarrassment.

“And do you think she knows that I am here?”

“I cannot tell. Not unlikely the Duchess told her in her note, I suppose.”

“If I thought she was coming,” said Carlo, “I would put on my mask, and not appear. I heard that she could not be here till late, as she will have to dress.”

“Do, do,” she whispered—“that would be a very good plan.”

As soon as the dance was over, he went away, after whispering to her that he was to have the first waltz after supper as Domino. To this she nodded an assent.

The Count had not yet entered the ball-room, for he disapproved so strongly of the old chapel being thus desecrated, that he wished to avoid going there. But after supper he could scarcely refuse the Duchess of Dromoland, who asked him to take her there, and who remarked that she thought he had not entered the ball-room all that evening.

“And how very strange it is that Miss Vivian has not arrived, when I sent the carriage on purpose for her. She had sent to inquire whether the carriage had returned, and the servant had brought no message.

“Allow me to go and inquire?” continued the Count, who was willing to seize this excuse for not entering the ball-room.

“Not yet. Please get me to my place at the farther end of the ball-room, for I want you to see what a really magic scene of enchantment it is—quite; and I really think that Miss Vivian has come after all. Look at that domino—it is just like her graceful movement—waltzing with the very tall man; and I daresay that quaint old lady in the corner is her chaperon.”

The Countess had not seen Carlo since he went to put on his mask and domino, although she had watched several men of about his height, and felt sure she should know his walk and air even through that complete disguise.

But she had seen a lady in a domino and mask who she fancied was Miss Vivian, and she approached her to try if she could recognise the voice. The longer she watched this tall domino the more convinced she became that it was Miss Vivian, and the more anxious she became to know what had become of Carlo. There was a very tall man who had spoken to this girl several times, and whose presence seemed to agitate her; but he was much taller than Carlo, and had a slovenly, ungraceful walk, most unlike his graceful movements.

Lady Selina Bugginfield, too, was struck with the likeness to Miss Vivian’s figure, and came up to tell her very triumphantly that she thought the reigning beauty of last season had really arrived, and would unmask after supper.

But the supper was now over, and the Countess had lost sight of her and the tall man. Nor had Carlo come to claim his promised waltz, and she had refused no end of partners—princes and dukes, and the best waltzers in the room—all for a man who had now deserted her. She began to be alarmed as the idea crossed her mind that the young girl might really have been there all the evening, and that the tall, awkward mask was really Carlo, and now both had disappeared. In vain she looked in all directions—neither of these dominoes was to be seen anywhere.

The waltz began again, and the numerous couples thronged to take their places, but still no Carlo appeared.

“What! not going to dance this lovely valse?” said Lady Selina, who was leaning on Prince E—— W——’s arm, as they passed near, and they took their places to begin the waltz. Still no Carlo appeared. What a position for the greatest beauty in the world to be placed in! Could he really have forgotten her?—had the fascination of that rival beauty prevailed?

The position was most humiliating, and Cunigunda suddenly resolved to go and assume a mask and domino, and lose herself among the crowd, hoping, by that disguise, to ascertain the truth.

“It was foolish of me not to have done this before,” she thought, “for of course they would shun my presence when they could see where I was.”

So she went and disguised herself completely, and then searched in all the other apartments, as well as the ball-room, for the missing pair; for by this time she had fully convinced herself that the strange domino was Miss Vivian, and the tall gentleman was really Carlo.

During her search I will proceed to relate with what success Cattarina planned to stop the summons sent by the Duchess of Dromoland to Aunt Jane’s house.

CATTARINA DIABELLI had arranged her plan very well, but she was not aware of the dogged determination and cleverness of English coachmen—how they often contrive when drunk not only to sit upon a hammercloth without falling off, but manage to guide their horses with extraordinary precision amid the densest crowd. She climbed up to the summit of the hill to see that the carriage took the turn in a contrary direction from The Grange village; but if she had remained there a few minutes longer she would have seen the carriage lamps suddenly turn the other way; for in spite of the deaf man’s remonstrance, the coachman declared that he had been told to “turn to the right close agin that ’ere windmill,” and doggedly pursued his way till he arrived at the old Manor House, with the Duchess’s note safe in his pocket. Joe Naylor inquired whether he should take in the Duchess’s note, but not liking to trust the man who had tried to mislead him so strangely, the coachman determined to give it into the servant’s hands.

But now that the note has reached the door of the house where I was staying, I will resume the narrative in my own person.

It was only in the afternoon of that very day I heard that the foreign gentleman, whose name was coupled so suspiciously with that of the Countess, was really Carlo Spinola. We had before heard the sad rumour that the Count and Cunigunda intended to separate; that he only remained at Castle Hall till after the fête, in order not to create more sensation in the county. Other reports were to the effect that she was much compromised by the presence of a foreign gentleman with whom she was constantly seen.

I found afterwards that Aunt Jane had all the time a strong suspicion that this foreigner was Carlo, but at last she was determined to ascertain the truth. This she only succeeded in doing the very day of the fête, when she immediately informed me of it, and at the same time suggested that I should write to Carlo. She asked me to begin by releasing him from any engagement he might consider I might imagine could still exist, but to express the greatest interest for his happiness; to inform him of the rumours which had reached us, and to endeavour to show him the horror of poor Cunigunda’s position—the loss of reputation, the loss of friendship, which his presence, if prolonged, entailed upon her with all the best people in every country;—all this, and a great deal more, she implored me to write.

I feared it would have no effect, but still I did not like to take upon myself the responsibility of rejecting her advice. So I sat down and wrote several letters, but destroyed them one after another; and at last, as the time began to press, I begged Aunt Jane to write and I would copy it, and addressed the letter to Castle Hall. She wrote a very good and most persuasive letter, and as soon as I copied it we despatched it by a trusty servant, who was told to ask for the Marchese Spinola, and give it into his own hands.

It was strange that in this letter Aunt Jane had contrived to describe so vividly the old feeling Carlo and I had for each other in childhood and early youth, that it seemed to awaken in me a most extraordinary interest in his fate. An intense longing to know how he would receive this missive, whether it would only excite anger and disgust towards me, or whether it—— So absorbed was I with these thoughts, and the re-awakened recollection of old, old times, that hours passed as I sat at the window of my own room. Aunt Jane would not disturb me, so she left me quite alone till dinner was announced, and I started up in surprise at the length of time that must have passed since the messenger went; and yet, when I looked back on those hours, I seemed to have lived years during their progress.

Seven o’clock, and the messenger had not returned, so he had probably not succeeded in seeing Carlo, and Aunt Jane told him not to return without bringing some kind of answer, even if he waited until the next morning.

Dinner, which I scarcely tasted, was over, and I tried to read and work. Still no answer; but about nine o’clock we were startled to hear a carriage drive up to the door, and the loud old hall-bell was violently rung. Aunt Jane rushed out to see what it could be, but I seemed rooted to the spot. I did not think it could be Carlo, but—

“Here, my dear child,” exclaimed Aunt Jane, as she ran back into the room with the Duchess’s note in her hand; “the Duke of Dromoland has sent his carriage to take you to the ball, and here is a note from the Duchess—a long note,” she added, as she saw it covered four sides. “You must and shall go there,” added Aunt Jane. “I shall never forgive you if you refuse.”

It was a most kind letter, and the Duchess had thoughtfully anticipated every objection I could make about dress and everything else.

“You will, of course, have no costume ready,” she said at the end of her letter, “but never mind; come just as you are, for it so happened I brought two costumes, for the Duke is so particular and fanciful that I am obliged to have a variety, for he says one kind of dress suits me one day, and quite a different one the next. I have also a spare domino, and a variety of masks.”

“I could furnish them also,” said Aunt Jane, as I read the note aloud to her. “There’s my old aunt’s theatrical wardrobe upstairs—domino, masks, everything; so put on your plain tarlatane dress with the camellias, and I’ll look for the costume at once. That will be much better; and you need not give any name, and I’ll go with you, and, if possible, we will get in without letting anybody know who we are, and we shall see how the coast stands.”

I could make no further objections, particularly as I saw the state of joyful excitement into which the idea of our going disguised to the ball had thrown Aunt Jane; and I had such confidence in her judgment that I resolved to follow implicitly her advice. But I would have given anything to know whether Carlo had received my letter or not; and now that I might possibly have an opportunity of speaking to him, I could not help regretting that it had been sent. Aunt Jane, however, was quite satisfied, and endeavoured to persuade me that it was much better to have sent it, so I tried to be content. I put on my white tarlatane to please Aunt Jane, but I firmly resolved that nothing should induce me to put off the mask and domino which she so providentially had found.

“And now as to our coming home. I’ll order the pony-carriage to be at Castle Hall at one o’clock; and it can wait, in case we should not be ready.”

So off we set in the Duke’s carriage, and were much surprised, at being handed into it by our old friend the mysterious deaf man, who told us, in answer to Aunt Jane’s inquiry, that he was engaged to be helper in the stables while so much company was at the Castle Hall.

BY the time we reached Castle Hall, most of the company had arrived, and dancing had already begun. I had only seen the place by daylight, and when most of the old rooms were in disorder, so that the splendid old entrance-hall, and the suite of beautiful rooms through which we passed, surprised and delighted us. As we passed through the blue drawing-room, we paused to look at our favourite picture by Vandyck, and the only person in that room was a tall man, with a handsome but pale and melancholy countenance, whom I immediately recognized as Count Rossi.

I was much re-assured by the kind manner in which he welcomed us, although he thought we were total strangers, no names having been given by the servant, according to our express orders. He said, with a foreign accent, that if we wished to remain unknown, he would show us on through the library, and pointed to a room beyond, through which we heard the music, and caught a sight of the entrance to the ball-room in the distance.

The Count’s most interesting face made me still more anxious, if possible, that the awful calamity which rumour reported was hanging over his head might be averted. When we entered the fairy scene, we could only take a quick impression of its wonderful beauty, for we were so eager to see if Carlo was there undisguised, that we could scarcely look at the flowery walls and the gorgeous colours and mystic light. In vain we looked all round the room—he was nowhere to be seen. But we saw Cunigunda dancing with a handsome man, and Aunt Jane was so fascinated by her appearance that I saw she could not take her eyes off the light and sylph-like figure.

“How strangely—how magically beautiful she is! I certainly never saw such perfect beauty,” said Aunt Jane. “Oh! if those splendid eyes could but find repose, and that beautiful mouth could but express kindness! Oh! dear, that gifted creature has every charm that can ensnare, but, alas! can never, never—— I wonder whether she is entirely irreclaimable?” added Aunt Jane, after a long pause. “If she were ever to suffer real loss, real pain, perhaps—— But I suppose she cares for no one enough to feel much if she lost him. Yet she is not fully enjoying her triumph—I see that. Ha! that’s he, is it not, now passing?” she added, soon after. “Make yourself known to him immediately—come.”

Yes, Carlo was there, not dancing, but looking round the room with a listless air; and certainly he appeared much less happy than he did in former days. Aunt Jane knew it was Carlo by the start she saw me give, and the suppressed word I was on the point of uttering.

“You will not stir, I see,” said Aunt Jane, “so I will go up to him. Stay here; do not approach till I make a sign to you; there, sit down near these beautiful roses.”

I watched anxiously as I saw her gently approach Carlo, and whisper something in his ear. He seemed to listen attentively, but he did not look so surprised as I imagined he would, so I began to think he had not received my note. She spoke for some minutes, and then I saw her point towards me. I scarcely know what passed after, for my eyes failed me, and my head swam round and round; but soon I felt the pressure of a well-known hand in mine, and the well-known voice: “Costanza, mi perdoni, vieni con me.”

I scarcely knew how I got up, and found myself drawn through the crowd, till we reached one of the small rooms in the outer part of the house, when he gently lifted my mask, and looked full in my face with the loving expression of long ago. He talked to me of old times, describing the scenes where we used to climb up the rocky heights near Sorrento, in search of flowers, and how I weaved them into beautiful garlands and long chains; and he reminded me how I made him jump across a chasm with one end of it, and then another, till the pinnacles of the rocks were decorated with the gorgeous festoons; and how one day he had a fall, and how miserable I then appeared to be at having suggested to him to make the dangerous leap.

“Ah! you cared for me then,” he said, with a sigh; “and I was more worth caring for. But I was sent to that fatal university, and I then lost you, my lovely guardian angel! And now!—The Countess told me you was going to be married to some great English milord. Is it not so?”

At that moment some people came into the room, and a bold but handsome lady, whom I recognised as Lady Selina Bugginfield, came up to him and said, with a look of extreme surprise,

“What! you here? Can you have forgotten that you were engaged for the first waltz after supper to the Countess? I heard you ask her, and know that she has refused no end of people to keep her promise to you.”

“I—I did not know that supper had even begun,” said Carlo.

“No, I suppose not,” said Lady Selina, with a mischievous and curious look at my disguise.

I whispered, in a low but disguised voice, that he had better go and fulfil his engagement.

“Come,” I added, “you must at least take me to the ball-room.”

I do not think she recognised me, for I pretended to be lame as we walked across the room; and I felt anxious that he should not appear so rude to the Countess, although I could not help feeling that some good influence might be exerted over him, which would prevent him from falling still lower. So we proceeded along the suite of rooms till just within the ball-room I descried Aunt Jane’s domino and mask. I knew it by a little mark I had placed near one of the eyes. But Cunigunda was nowhere to be seen; and several people told Carlo, in answer to his inquiries, that she had totally disappeared, or perhaps assumed some disguise.

“Pray search for her,” I whispered; “and do not remain near me, or people will begin to suspect.”

“I will seek for her, if you promise to be in that cameo-boudoir”—(the small room where I had passed the last two hours, so called from the walls being covered with casts of antique gems and cameos)—“at the end of the next dance; for I must see you.”

“Yes, we will be there; if Aunt Jane likes to come,” I said.

He then went among the crowd of dominoes, to seek for the Countess; but for some time he did not appear to find any one at all resembling her.

IN the meantime Lady Selina Bugginfield came up, and endeavoured to draw me into conversation; but Aunt Jane, whose quick eyes discerned her look of curiosity, said in a gruff voice,

“Come, you promised to show me the tapestry-room.” And by a rapid movement she contrived to get me into another part of the room, and interposed the barrier of the quadrilles between us and Lady Selina. Then a waltz began, and presently we saw Cunigunda, in her own sylph-like attire, while triumphant joy beamed on her radiant countenance, begin the waltz with Carlo.

All eyes seemed to be fixed on this pair; and no wonder, for such a wonderfully handsome couple could scarcely ever have been before seen. To many of the spectators it was the first time they had seen this pair (about whom so many reports were in circulation) dance together; and even the other couples who were ready to begin, paused to gaze on them before they joined the dance.

Twice round the large circle they flew, when suddenly Cunigunda uttered a piercing shriek, and seemed to fall forwards and hide her eyes on Carlo’s shoulder. At the same moment a kind of wail was heard, which seemed to proceed from a voice high up in the old carved gallery.

I heard it plainly, and immediately looked up, for I had seen on Cunigunda’s face, when she uttered the shriek, a look of horror directed up to that spot; then I saw a pale lovely form disappearing in the shadowy dimness behind the carved projection of the gallery. The figure was clothed in a kind of white drapery, which waved behind her as she retreated; and I turned towards the crowd of lookers-on, wondering if others had seen the strange apparition.

Cunigunda had now raised her head and looked up to the gallery, and seeing that the figure had disappeared, she seemed to make a wild determination to proceed with the waltz—when, to my unutterable astonishment and horror, the next moment the floor beneath them seemed to give way, and with a tottering struggle and shrieks for help, she and Carlo disappeared with a crash into an opening beneath.

“Save them! save them!” I cried, and we ran to the spot where they had disappeared, and whence shrieks still proceeded, but nothing but black darkness could be seen!

A whole medallion of the floor had given way, and rested tipped up cornerways, disclosing, in the stone floor beneath on which the parquet rested, an open trap-door, with a flight of steep and narrow stone steps leading to a vault beneath. Horror and helpless dismay were on every one’s face, but no one seemed capable of doing anything except Aunt Jane, who rushed to the end of the room and brought a candle, when it occurred to others to do the same; and on lowering them down into the open space, the glitter of Cunigunda’s silver dress was seen far below, while cries of agony continued to be heard.

“A ladder! bring a ladder!” cried Aunt Jane, “and send for the Count. Go,” she said to me, “go and send him, for he is certainly not in this hall.”

I therefore ran into the other rooms, giving the alarm as I went to all whom I met, imploring them to get a ladder and send for the housekeeper, Mrs. Lacy, as it occurred to me she might know something about this most mysterious trap-door.

At last I found the Count, who was in the entrance-hall, assisting some ladies to get their cloaks, who were beginning to leave the ball.

“Come,” I said, “quick; the Countess has fallen through a trap-door, and—.” Without waiting to hear more he ran to the ball-room, while I soon succeeded in finding Mrs. Lacy, and hastened to bring her to the spot. But she could give no explanation of the mysterious opening, nor where the steps beneath it were likely to lead.

“Perhaps it’s the old opening into the smuggler’s lurking holes,” she muttered. “I knew no good could come of making a ball-room of that old chapel—a place, too, I heard tell the smugglers used in ancient times.”

We found that a ladder had been procured, and that Aunt Jane and one or two others who had thrown off their masks and dominoes, had been the first to climb down with a light.

“They are still living,” she exclaimed, “but how they are to be got up this narrow space I cannot imagine—does no one know where that staircase leads?”

I looked round for the Count, who, when I came up, had been tearing off from their fastenings some of the gilded ropes which divided the dances, and endeavouring with shawls to make a padded support, by which the poor sufferers could be hoisted up.

He was standing just behind, and as I turned to repeat to him Aunt Jane’s inquiry, as to where the passage led, I saw that he was deadly white, and gazing fixedly up into the oak gallery.

Following the direction of his eyes, I again distinctly saw the white figure. She seemed to be looking down at the scene below with a frightened and horror-struck expression, and as light fell clearly on her, I saw that it was the living image of the lady in Vandyck’s picture.

“Look!—look there!” I said, pulling Mrs. Lacy’s arm. “What is that? The Count sees it too.”

But before the stately dame could turn round to look, the figure had vanished.

“Pooh, nonsense, Miss!—when things like this happen, everybody is off their heads. That must be the crypt where her poor ladyship is buried alive, and——”

I think the Count heard her words, for he passed his hand across his forehead, as if to brush away some terrible recollection, and heaving a gasping sigh, he seized the ropes which he had collected, and descended with them to the abyss.

By this time all the servants had come to the place, and among them Cattarina Diabelli, who evinced the greatest anxiety for the fate of her mistress. She, too, went down, and found that their efforts had been unsuccessful to raise the bodies, and that by reason of the narrow space they could not get them up.

Aunt Jane called out that there was a door which seemed to lead out of the narrow space, if it could be opened on the other side.

On hearing this, Cattarina struck her forehead, and exclaimed,

“Ah, capisco, lo cercherò!” and rushing madly through the crowd, she hastened out of the room, when she called out,

“Mr. Naylor, Joe Naylor—find me dat man, for he can save my lady’s life! Send Joe Naylor, he is one deaf man in de stables.”

The rumour had probably reached the stables by this time, and even the deaf ear of Joe Naylor.

His first impulse was to run away, but when he heard that Mrs. Catering Devilry was calling for him, he thought better of it, and resolved to see her. So he came into the hall, and she took him into one of the cloak-rooms, where no one was left—everyone having hastened back into the ball-room.

A short conversation ensued, and the result was that he called for four strong stable boys, and getting lanterns, he ordered them to climb after him up the side of the hill.

A doctor, who happened to be among the maskers, volunteered to attempt this path, in order to reach the way leading to the secret door in the vaults, and thus extricate the unfortunate pair from their most painful situation.

Poor Carlo seemed to absorb my whole thoughts, as I continued to stand on the brink of the horrible opening, breathlessly awaiting the confirmation of my fears as to whether he was really killed by the fall. I called down to Aunt Jane that Cattarina seemed to hope the other door beneath could be soon opened.

“I hope so, for they are crushed up in the narrow space at the bottom. I could not reach them, and I only hope they will live to be extricated.”

So she climbed up the ladder again, and we stood in horrible suspense, listening intently to the moans of agony which rose now and then from the depths below.

“I think she is alive, but I fear the Count is killed. He has uttered no cry. As far as I could see, his eyes were closed, and he did not seem to move.”

Poor Carlo! to be doomed thus to die, just as some good instincts seemed awakening in his mind, I thought; and, of course, his awful danger revived a hundredfold the newly-awakening interest I felt in his fate. Poor Carlo! oh! if he could but survive, perhaps the pain, the escape might serve to revive the good qualities he possessed in former days—in early youth.

It seemed hours that we stood there listening to the plaintive moans, and now and then a sharper shriek of agony, which I knew proceeded from poor Cunigunda. But I heard no sound that resembled Carlo’s sweet and melodious, and formerly deeply-loved voice.

Many persons had quitted the room, probably to obtain some news from the Count, who had accompanied the party that went outside the hill. At last we heard a dull sound down below. The lights were again lowered, and we could see a small door just behind Carlo’s head gradually opening.

“Take care, gently!” called out Aunt Jane. “Do not let him fall back too suddenly. There, lift him gently up. I can be of use, now that the opening of the door is accomplished.”

She climbed down, and helped to lift the mangled bodies through the door into a kind of winding staircase, down which they were carried till they reached the vast open space forming the crypts beneath the old chapel.

The doctor then examined the wounds of the sufferers, and declared it would be impossible to carry them out by the way by which the party came up, for they had been obliged to climb down the narrow mossy path, along the perpendicular rocks which I described in a preceding chapter. He added that, if the old door which he showed us, and which had been built up, could be broken open, it would probably lead at once into the flat green in the centre of the walls of the old Castle.

So labourers were sent for, and the doctor proceeded with the examination of the sufferers’ wounds, while the men broke open the ancient doorway. It may be imagined that I soon followed Aunt Jane down the ladder, and went with the others into the crypt. I could not help feeling Carlo’s heart, to see if it still beat, and fancied I felt a slight movement.

“He is alive,” I said to the doctor.

“I hope so, miss, but I fear the brain has received a most severe contusion. He has a deep wound on the side of his head. If he recovers, it will be a most tedious affair, and—I fear for the mind.”

Cunigunda had now ceased to moan, and we all thought she was dead; but Dr. Johnson declared that she had fainted from pain, as her shoulder was dislocated and leg broken, and also a severe wound in her forehead. These, and other injuries, must have caused the greatest agony, and Dr. Johnson much feared that she could not long survive.

THE workmen, assisted by the Count and several other gentlemen, soon succeeded in tearing down the stones which had closed up the passage through an ancient Norman gateway; and the Count lifted the apparently lifeless form of Cunigunda in his arms, and carried her through it. Doctor Johnson, with the help of the Duke of Dromoland, who had been most active in his endeavours to assist, proceeded next; and we all emerged from the damp and dismal vaults into the bright moonlight which illuminated the ruined towers and arches of the old castle.

At another moment I should have enjoyed it; and in after-thought the impression remains on my mind (although I scarcely seemed to take it in at the time) of the wondrous beauty of the scene, while the shadows of the broken Gothic and early Norman arches and mullioned windows on the mossy turf, the sweet heath-scented air and pure silvery light, all formed such a striking contrast to the artificial illumination, and also in Cunigunda’s, and perhaps many other cases, artificial gaiety of the ball-room we had just quitted. But at the time I seemed to comprehend nothing but Carlo’s pale and ghastly face, and dark hair stained with blood. I found that the cool air revived him—that his eyes were slowly opening. We had to walk across the entire space enclosed by the outer walls of the castle, till we reached the gateway which had formed the chief entrance, and where the old portcullis still remained, although a bridge of a later date, which was now the only approach to the ruins, had been thrown across the old moat. A good road then wound round the rocky height, which led us down to the front entrance of the present house.

The Count carried his wife into the cameo-boudoir, which was the nearest room; and Carlo was taken into a small library opening from the entrance-hall.

Doctor Johnson had already given orders to send an express to the celebrated De Cheyne, and also to the next village for a clever medical man, as he wished for more assistance, and shrank from the responsibility of attending alone to such dangerous injuries.

Aunt Jane followed the poor Countess into the boudoir, making a sign to me to remain outside the door of the library, where Carlo was laid on the sofa. The Duke of Dromoland, and some other gentlemen, went with him, and remained in the library after the doctor hastily left it, for all thought that the Countess was in the more dangerous condition.

The entrance-hall became densely crowded after the news had reached the distant ball-room that the sufferers had been brought into the house; but few of the numerous guests seemed disposed to leave until the doctor’s report upon those injured had been heard. Besides, great curiosity had been excited to ascertain the cause of the awful catastrophe. Several people besides myself had seen the mysterious figure in the carved gallery, which apparently seemed to have caused the Countess’s shrieks preceding her fall; and they had described it to others.

“Who or what was it?” was the eager question, which received every kind of probable and improbable answer.

“Then why did the floor sink down in that extraordinary manner all at once, when it must have been danced upon hundreds of times in the course of the evening?”

Many of these questions and vague surmises reached my ears as I stood at the library door, and I felt as much perplexed as any of the wondering throng.

In a few minutes Aunt Jane returned to tell me that the Count wished to see me, “for he says you might possibly be able to explain something,” she added, in a low whisper; so I immediately accompanied her to the cameo-boudoir, in spite of the efforts of numerous people who pounced upon Aunt Jane to hear how the Countess was. They had recognised her as the first person who descended the ladder leading to the trap-door.

“She is still alive—that’s all,” Aunt Jane said, in a low but distinct voice, as she with difficulty made her way through the throng.

“But why did it happen?—was it really the ghost she saw?” was asked us by numerous voices, which we still continued to hear till we had shut the double doors of the cameo-boudoir.

Cunigunda’s eyes were open, and the moment she saw me she gave a most piteous moan, and seemed trying to speak.

“Go near—put your ear down to her mouth,” said the Count, who stood at the head of her sofa.

I leaned down, and also tried to take her hand, which hung down by the side of the sofa.

“She cannot feel your hand,” said the doctor; “her arm is broken, and we can do nothing; but she has evidently something painful on her mind. Try to catch the cause. Look, she is endeavouring to speak.”

I saw her poor lips trying to move, so I spoke to her in Italian, and endeavoured to soothe and give some hope in this her evidently dying hour. She certainly understood me, for a look of such agonized despair passed over her face, that I shuddered at the thought of her misery. I tried to remind her of the atonement—to implore her to turn her heart to the Saviour, who had died to save us all. “Only believe this,” I entreated; but her lips moved convulsively, and I fancied they were trying to pronounce the word “Dorina.”

“Yes,” I said, with firm decision, “Dorina will forgive you too.” But she could not believe it, and her despair seemed to increase.

Of course the Count heard and understood me, for he whispered in my ear in Italian—“I’m sure she thinks that figure in the balcony was her spirit—and, indeed, so do I.”

Mrs. Lacy was in the room, and on hearing me say the word “Dorina,” came up and whispered some most astounding words in my ear, and then asked my advice. Aunt Jane saw there was some mystery—that I was anxious for her advice, and that poor Cunigunda looked more and more overwhelmed by some fearful remorse.

“Sacrifice everything to give her peace—clear up every mystery, if you can!” said Aunt Jane.

Upon which Mrs. Lacy spoke in a low tone to the doctor, to which his decided answer was, “She cannot possibly live more than an hour at most.”

“Then I will take upon myself the responsibility,” she said, with a kind of trembling decision, as she begged the Count to follow her out of the room.

We feared that Cunigunda was sinking fast, but the look of despair in her splendid eyes seemed to increase in its horror as her efforts to speak were unavailable.

It was heartrending to see her trying to utter something, and Aunt Jane entreated me not to give up my efforts to impart to her some hope.

I said everything that I could think of, and tried to persuade her that Dorina had actually forgiven her for any injury or any fault she might ever have committed. But I saw that, although she heard and understood my words, she could not believe.

“No, not for me—there can be no forgiveness for such as I am,” was the sad and despairing expression on her still most lovely face. We saw that she was looking anxiously towards the door, as if in expectation of the Count’s return—as if she were still more afraid to die without seeing him again, and perhaps hearing a word of forgiveness from his lips.

AUNT JANE began to be very anxious, and quitted the room to see whether she could hasten the Count’s return. It was a dreadful moment of suspense, for Cunigunda was quite sensible, and seemed aware that the kind and energetic Aunt Jane (although she had never seen the dear old lady before) had compassion for her misery and remorse, and was endeavouring to assist in mitigating her awful sufferings.

I fancied that she was making a violent effort to live until her husband returned, for she tried several times to swallow the restoratives which Dr. Johnson occasionally put to her lips.

At last, just as we feared her eyes were closing in the agony of death, the door opened. She heard the sound, and never shall I forget the beseeching expression of those beautiful eyes when the Count entered the room alone.

His agitation was extreme, and he could scarcely speak, yet endeavoured to inquire of the doctor “whether the sight of an old and formerly dear friend, who was thought to be dead two years ago, but who had been miraculously saved, would——” He had, with the most extreme difficulty, proceeded thus far, but Cunigunda evidently heard and caught at his incoherent words, with a mixture of joy and terror, and tried to express an eager anxiety to hear more.

Doctor Johnson, who had keenly watched her countenance, said,

“Let the old friend come at once; it may be the person she wishes to see.”

A grateful smile seemed to pass over her face, and an imploring look towards the Count induced him to open the door and beckon to some one outside, when a closely veiled figure in white glided into the room, and knelt down by Cunigunda’s sofa.

“Tu mi conosci,” the lady said in a melodiously sweet voice; “non son morta.”

And drawing back her veil, the most lovely face I had seen on the balcony beamed on the dying Countess with a look of heavenly peace and hope.

As Cunigunda gazed intently on the kneeling form, her features seemed to catch, as it were, some reflection of the same expression, for gradually despair seemed to be exchanged for the dawning of hope; she made a final effort to speak, and at last she said, “Dorina, perdonami, ti voleva male, e adesso io muojo per l’istessa morte che voleva dare a te. Tu puoi perdonarmi?”

“Ah si, preghiamo Iddio, è sicuro ti perdonera come io lo fo.”

“Ed Alfonso pure,” added Cunigunda, as she raised her eyes with an imploring look towards her husband.

The Count seemed unable to speak, but the expression on his face probably satisfied his dying wife. With a last effort she slowly spoke the words, “Siate felici insieme;” and, after a pause, during which she seemed to have great difficulty in breathing, she added, “e pregate per me.”

Her eyes closed, but the look of hope which had so lately begun to dawn on her features still remained—her bodily sufferings were ended; and when Dorina, and then Alphonso, kissed her beautiful forehead, in token of forgiveness, Cunigunda had ceased to feel.

IN a former chapter I described the mysterious disappearance of Dorina at the ball given in the caves at Hohenstein, on the eve of her bridal-day, as it was told by my mother. Soon after that fatal night her father died—he never recovered the shock; and his only brother (Cunigunda’s father) was killed from a fall while out hunting, not long after he had succeeded to the family titles and estates.

Cunigunda’s grief at the loss of her father and uncle was apparently so great that she became almost mad, and was said to have attempted suicide, from which she was only saved by the cleverness and promptitude of her old nurse. She then declared that she could never live at Hohenstein, but that she would go and take the veil in the Convent of Udine, where she had been brought up with Dorina. She went first to Venice, to take leave of some of her relations; and among others she expressed a wish to see her cousin, Count Rossi. He had remained at Hohenstein till the death of his betrothed’s father, as he felt that his presence was some consolation to the broken-hearted Graf. Cunigunda remained there apparently for the same reason, so that they had been thrown much together during that time of suspense and suffering.

Probably the fascinating Cunigunda may have been still more charming in her apparent sorrow, and in her efforts to cheer the bereaved father and bridegroom. Certain it is that when Count Rossi heard that, after her own father’s death, Cunigunda attempted to kill herself from temporary madness, and after that, of her determination to take the veil, he was deeply moved; and when, on her arrival at Venice, she expressed a wish to see him, ere she quitted the world for ever, he most readily acceded to her request. She was staying at her aunt’s palace, and the old lady was in the room with her when Count Rossi was announced, but she soon withdrew, and the Count had a long interview with his beautiful cousin.

Whether she appealed to his feelings of compassion for her misery, or what other spells she made use of, can never be known; but the result was that, instead of becoming a nun, she soon afterwards became Countess Rossi. They had of course long before given up all idea that Dorina could have survived; and even when the English gentleman who disappeared with her in the cave—even when he proved to be alive many months afterwards, it only confirmed their belief that she must have died, otherwise he would have been able to give some account of her; but this gentleman felt convinced that the lovely Gräfinn must have been drowned in the stream into which he fancied they both must have fallen.

However, it appeared afterwards that she did not fall into the water, but between the rocks near it.

The account Dorina afterwards gave was that she supposed she was stunned for some time by the fall, but, on recovering consciousness, she groped a long way in the dark through the passages and caves. Sometimes they were quite narrow, and again, in other parts, she seemed to pass through large spaces where the ground was very uneven. She thought that she must have walked many miles, but in what direction she could, of course, give no idea. At length her strength was beginning to fail, and she was on the point of sinking down in despair, when she fancied a streak of light was visible in the far distance. With renewed hope she again dragged on her weary limbs, though almost fainting with exhaustion.

On—on she walked, but the ground was so uneven that she several times lost sight of the cheering though still far distant ray of light. It was certainly the light of day, therefore she was made aware how many hours she had been in the cave, and that light could not be anywhere near Hohenstein, for she knew that even there she was far below the level, and, moreover, that there was no other approach to them than the spot where the ball had taken place.

She was able to proceed but very slowly, and her progress was still more retarded by her efforts to keep that bit of light in sight, for if she walked straight on she lost sight of it, and it was only by keeping on the higher portions of the ground that she could see it at all. At last it seemed to become somewhat larger, and she made a still greater effort to proceed.

But the ground became very wet and slippery, and, in her haste, she fell. After that she remembered nothing, but she afterwards heard that a young girl, the daughter of a smuggler, who lived at the outside of the caverns, discovered her lying among the rocks, apparently dead. Then she carried her home, and her mother made great efforts to restore animation. They found that she had received a deep wound on the side of her head.

Dorina supposed that they treated her with as much skill and kindness as was compatible with their own safety. It seemed that she had not been able to speak or move for several months; that the blow had affected her mind, for she had no recollection of where she had been, or what had taken place, till she seemed to wake suddenly, and found her own old nurse sitting by her bedside.

This nurse was the grand-daughter of the English attendant who had gone to Germany with the Lady Alice Roland, when she married Graf von Hohenstein; and it so happened that this woman’s brother-in-law, Müller, had turned out badly, and joined the band of these robbers or smugglers who infested a part of the country near Adelsberg, and made use of the least-known portions of the caverns for purposes of concealment.

But four months had passed before Frau Müller had any tidings of her loved young lady, and it was by the merest chance that the lost bride was still alive, although her reason appeared to be completely gone. It was after the death of Cunigunda’s father, and the young heiress had gone, as we have already stated, to Venice, to take the veil in its neighbourhood.

THE Castle of Hohenstein had been left, since the death of the last Graf, in charge of an old seneschal, who had gained much influence over his master, and who contrived, even during the latter’s short tenure of the place, to oust several of the former servants, and replace them by friends of his own.

Amongst others Frau Müller had been dismissed, and she went to live in a little cottage belonging to some of her late husband’s family near Grätz. She took with her a beautiful miniature of her young mistress, which had been given to her by Dorina’s father; and one day, when at her brother-in-law’s, a little girl, who had been sent from a distance to sell some smuggled goods in Grätz, happened to see the portrait, and said,

“Oh! that’s our pretty lady!”

On being questioned by Frau Müller, the girl seemed suddenly resolved to say nothing, and tried to make some lame excuse; but her confusion tended to arouse the good Frau’s suspicion, and she contrived, at last, to draw from the girl that a beautiful lady was concealed at her mother’s cottage, but that if her father heard that she had said anything about it he would kill her.

Frau Müller said no more to the girl, but she contrived, one day, unobserved, to follow the child to the cottage, nearly four miles out of Grätz. But as the little one began to mend her pace when she came to a more lonely part of the road, the panting Frau Müller feared she should lose sight of her, and, by running and calling after, she attracted the girl back, and holding up a large gold piece, promised to give it, and one like it, if she would let her pass the night at her home.

The girl at first shook her head, and said her father would beat her to death if he ever found it out.

“But your father is not at home,” guessed Frau Müller at these words; “and I only wish to stop one night. I will make it worth your while.”

“Very well, then,” said the child; “if you will let me tie your hands behind you, and bandage your eyes for the last quarter of an hour, and submit to be led by me, I will risk it.”

Frau Müller consented. They proceeded in silence about a mile further, when the girl turned up through a narrow ravine, at some parts so narrow as to be evidently impassable in Winter, when the mountain torrent must come rushing down the gravel bed it had worn for itself in the rock.

Here the footing was difficult, and when, at a turn of the path, they suddenly came to an apparently solid wall of rock, over which a tiny streamlet trickled, the girl stopped, and proceeded to bandage Frau Müller’s eyes. She then took her arm, and led her carefully through what felt like thick bushes; then made her stoop very low, and then down some winding steps, as if cut in the rocks.

At the bottom of these she paused, and after proceeding along a path for about ten minutes, unwound the handkerchief from Frau Müller’s eyes. She found herself in the doorway of a wooden hut, built against the side of a high and precipitous rock. A little valley, closed by steep declivities, lay in front of them, and round the cottage there extended a patch of greensward, on which a couple of goats were feeding. The girl entered the cottage, and the old nurse heard an angry altercation between her and a hard-featured woman, whom she supposed to be the mother, which was checked by the piece of gold which the child held up before her eyes, pointing to Frau Müller.

They spoke to each other a kind of wild patois, which the latter scarcely understood. She looked anxiously round the room to see if she could discover the object of her search—the pretty lady. And oh! how her heart leaped within her when, as soon as her eyes became accustomed to its gloom, she discovered, lying on a pallet at the further end, a poor, thin, ill-clad form and pale face, in which she had no difficulty in discovering the loved features of her long-lost Dorina!

But, alas! though the eyes were open, they certainly did not recognise her, nor did she seem to hear the words of passionate love and joy with which Frau Müller addressed her.

The old nurse determined that nothing should induce her to leave her young lady any more; and now the question was how to move her from this wretched abode.

She feared, from the savage and suspicious looks of the older woman, and another who now appeared, that the expression of a wish to send for a doctor might lead to their both being murdered, and yet it was indispensable both to do this and to remove the invalid to a more airy and accessible abode.

She discovered that the older woman had heard of the loss of the Gräfinn Dorina, and imagined that she might be the stranger they had found in the cave; and, by the promise of a large reward, Frau Müller at last persuaded them to let her carry Dorina to her own cottage, which was in a secluded village near Grätz, where she could be nursed and attended to in quiet.

As an earnest of the reward they would eventually have, she promised them five gold pieces if they would carry the lady to the place she designated, and lead her, Frau Müller, back the way she came. To this the women at last consented, on condition of the strictest secrecy, and that she should never tell where she had found the lady. They wrapped up the unconscious sufferer in a couple of blankets, the fineness of which, in so poor an abode, would, at another time, have astonished Frau Müller. One woman tied the top ends round her shoulders, where Dorina’s head rested, the other supported her feet. The old nurse would willingly have carried the precious burden herself, but to this they would not consent, as her eyes must be bandaged and her hands tied; while the little girl, her first guide, must lead her as before, that she might never be able to betray the entrance to their abode. They said it would be impossible to carry the young lady through the narrow winding passage by which she had come, and that they must lead them round by a much longer way.

FRAU MÜLLER was led for some distance along the sweet-scented grass, then up a gentle ascent, by what seemed to be a winding path, then down again into another valley, and then through a thick wood, where the brambles brushed into her face.

She was led so long thus bandaged that she began to fear she was being betrayed, and entreated the little girl to undo the handkerchief, and let her see how her young lady bore the transit.

“In another minute,” she replied, “we shall be in the high road to Grätz, but we are going to cross some water. You must try to step where I tell you, or you will miss the wooden bridge.”

This was not pleasant to hear; but there was nothing for it but patience, and as she heard the steps of the others before her, she hoped it was all right.

In another quarter of an hour her fears were set at rest. The little party stopped; Frau Müller’s hands and eyes were loosened; she found herself in a narrow bridle-path, which presently opened into the public road to Grätz, and to her great relief another two miles brought her and her precious charge to the little cottage she then inhabited. She placed Dorina upon the bed, and took up her quarters beside her; then sent the smuggler’s daughter, who seemed to have treated her with great kindness, to Grätz for a doctor. She then endeavoured to convince the girl’s mother that she had done very wrong in concealing the existence of the young Gräfinn from her father and the family of Hohenstein. She declared that the old Graf would have been able to shelter her husband, Peter Schmidt, from the pursuit of justice, after he could show that his wife and daughter had been the means of saving his child’s life. But Frau Schmidt, the bandit’s wife, maintained that nothing could have induced her to run the risk of her husband’s displeasure on his return—in fact, for more than a month after they found the poor lady, they had no suspicion of who she really was. A few days before they found her, Schmidt had gone off into a distant part of the country, and they were so afraid of anyone suspecting the concealment of a stranger at the cottage, or finding the way to it, that they took care to have as little communication as possible with the outer world.

When her husband returned, he heard some rumours of the strange disappearance of the bride with an Englishman, and then it struck him that the lady whose life her daughter had saved might possibly be the missing heiress. But the Graf, her father, was now dead, and his brother had succeeded to his title and vast estates, and it was well known that his character was very different from that of his elder brother, and that, until the last year or two, they had not been on good terms. For the present Graf had been extravagant, and had lost a great deal at the gaming-tables, and acted in many ways quite contrary to the wishes and advice of his brother. Therefore, Peter Schmidt was not far wrong when he told his wife that he was certain the new Graf would not thank him for being the means of depriving him of his vast inheritance by bringing forward the rightful possessor, nor could it make any difference to the poor young lady herself if she were never to recover her reason.

So they kept their secret, and soon afterwards the Graf was killed out hunting, and Peter Schmidt felt certain, from all he had heard of his daughter, Gräfinn Cunigunda, that she was even less likely than her father to forego her inheritance in favour of the woman who had been betrothed to Count Rossi. For there were some among the old retainers of Dorina’s father who saw through the well-feigned despair of Gräfinn Cunigunda, and guessed her designs and wishes. Rumours, too, of her intended marriage with Count Rossi began to circulate, in spite of the declaration she made, before leaving Hohenstein, that she was resolved to take the veil.

Soon after Frau Müller discovered her young mistress, the news reached her that they, Count Rossi and Cunigunda, were actually betrothed, and that their marriage was to take place, almost immediately.

Poor Frau Müller was most sadly perplexed by this intelligence. If the Count could but be apprised that his beautiful bride was still alive, surely, she thought, he would not be so base as to marry another—her enemy too; for Frau Müller was shrewd enough to see through the fascinating Cunigunda, and knew that, with the pretence of affection, she hated her young mistress.

Most sorely was she now perplexed. Were she to write a letter it might fall into other hands. Besides, if he were really faithless, and had ceased to care for his lost bride, it would be better to let him marry, lest the enraged Cunigunda should carry out some evil designs against her rival, while she was still helpless and bereft of reason; perhaps, under pretence of more careful watching, remove her out of Frau Müller’s care, and have her made away with, or shut up in some mad-house.

It will thus be seen that Frau Müller had no better opinion of the fascinating Cunigunda than my mother had.

The only way of clearing up these doubts and ascertaining whether the Count was still worthy of knowing the truth, was for Frau Müller to see him herself.

She resolved to travel to Venice and seek an interview with Count Rossi before it was too late to prevent the mischief.

Confiding the care of her precious charge to her favourite daughter, she started by the Schnell-wagen for Trieste, which was the quickest conveyance she could afford. At Trieste she embarked for Venice, but a storm, succeeded by a thick fog, made the voyage twice as long as usual. At last she surmounted all obstacles, and landing on the quay, hired a gondola to take her direct to the Rossi Palace on the Grand Canal.

Frau Müller knew the palace well, for she had always accompanied her young charge to the convent at Udine, and they generally passed some days with Dorina’s relations in Venice.

As she approached the entrance of the Grand Canal and came in sight of the beautiful old building, her impatience became greater, and she implored the gondolier to hasten his speed. He complied with her request, when at the same time he informed her that if she wanted to see the Count she would be disappointed, for he had left Venice the day before, just after his marriage with a beautiful young heiress.

Seeing her look of extreme concern, the good gondolier tried to comfort her with the intelligence that he had probably only taken his bride as far as his palace on the Lido, near Padua. They could soon learn his destination, and he pushed on vigorously till the gondola drew up at the palace steps.

An old servant of the Rossi family, to whom Frau Müller was well known, was standing at the grand entrance, and in answer to her anxious inquiry, he informed her that it was true. “His master was,” he said, “married yesterday, at St. Marco’s Church, and he had taken his bride to visit the courts of Europe.”

The old man said this in a tone which showed that he regretted deeply what had occurred, and the sight of the nurse of his master’s former betrothed, the lovely Dorina, brought tears to the good man’s eyes. He made her come into his own apartments on the ground floor, and they had a long talk.

BUT Frau Müller was too cautious to say anything about the existence of Dorina till she had thought the matter over most deeply, and had consulted her sister, who had been housekeeper at Hohenstein, on the subject. She therefore returned to Grätz at once, and had the delight of finding her lady rather improved in health. But the doctor advised that she should be fed on the most nourishing diet, and he gave hopes that when she should become stronger, she might regain her reason. His hope was soon afterwards fulfilled; and one day, when Frau Müller came into the room, Dorina gazed at her with a look of gradually awakening surprise.

The good Frau feared to speak, or show the joy she felt, lest the awakening to consciousness should be too sudden; so she sat quietly down at her knitting by the bedside, and soon afterwards Dorina seemed to be sinking into a quieter sleep than she had hitherto witnessed; and though pale, the features wore a calmer expression.

She slept so soundly for many hours, that the nurse was afraid of moving, lest she should disturb that sweet sleep, for she had not seen the loved child look so happy since her accident. Suddenly it occurred to her, should the Gräfinn regain her reason, how could she ever bear to hear that her betrothed, whom she loved with all the ardour of her loving heart, was faithless, and had actually married?

When Frau Müller thought of this, she began to dread Dorina’s awakening to reason. How could she ever tell her the truth?—or how could she conceal it?

While the good Frau was revolving these most painful questions in her mind, she saw Dorina’s eyes open, and this time a look of pleasure was mingled with surprise, and she said, “Where am I?”

The nurse endeavoured to evade the answer by trying to persuade her to go to sleep after she had taken some nourishment. She endeavoured to make Dorina understand that she had been dangerously ill, and that she must not talk nor think of anything.

Fortunately the doctor made his daily visit while she was endeavouring to find excuses to evade the answers to her lady’s questions. He at once saw the importance of keeping her mind quiet; and as the want of sleep had been one of the main causes of the distraction in her brain, he told Frau Müller to give her niece (for he had been led to suppose that the invalid was her niece) a powerful narcotic, in case she did not fall asleep again soon after she had taken the nourishment, which she now seemed to eat with some appetite, and by all means not to let her speak at all of the accident which had caused all her sufferings.

Fortunately Dorina had no notion of the length of time which had elapsed since her fatal fall, and had a kind of vague idea that it was the next day she had awakened. As soon as she began to recollect the past, she thought that the reason of her being in the cottage was that she had been too ill to be moved home; and she asked over and over again why her father was not there, and how soon would he come to see her?

At first the poor nurse said the Count was ill, and not able to leave his room for some days; but she had sent a message to say that the Gräfinn would know him now, and she had no doubt he would come to-morrow.

But when the morrow came, and Dorina saw the shadow of evening darken the lattice window, and her father did not appear, she became so excited that Frau Müller was at her wits’ end what to do or say. Her sister strongly advised her to tell the truth; and, in fact, she took upon herself the responsibility, as she saw it would be impossible to keep up any delusion much longer.

So Fräulein Marta, as she was called, who had also helped to attend upon her lady since they discovered her, went into her room, and, in the most cautious manner, made Dorina understand that her father was dead. This blow was so severe that she became almost insensible, and for several days they feared a return of her mental malady. But her strong religious principles, and habits of perfect resignation to the will of God, began to assert their influence on her well-trained mind, and soon a look of peace was visible on her still lovely face. They saw it in her sleep as well as in her half-waking, half-conscious state, and old Fräulein Marta congratulated herself on having told the truth; and she determined to tell Dorina everything, as soon as she had regained a little more strength.

And so, little by little, the poor heiress heard all that had occurred. The last piece of news—the actual marriage of her betrothed to Cunigunda—was deferred till the very last; and Fräulein Marta contrived, in spite of the agony of fear, to disclose this saddest news of all in a most judicious manner possible. She appealed to Dorina’s high sense of religion; and hope of happiness in the next world; and, after a few days’ agony and disappointment, Dorina was able to bear even this most crushing blow. But her greatest anxiety now was to extract a solemn promise from her two faithful attendants that they would never reveal to anyone that she was still alive. Her wish on this point was so ardently expressed that they saw it could not be refused without danger of again retarding her recovery.

THE descendants of Martha Bevis, who had come from Castle Hall with Lady Alice, had always kept up a correspondence with their relatives in England, and also with the family of Mrs. Lacy and her mother, the successive housekeepers of the Earls De Roland. They also kept up the use of their mother tongue, although they married Germans, for the Grafs von Hohenstein always had their children taught English; for the memory of the beautiful Lady Alice was always kept up, and her portraits, and the embroidery she had worked, were revered as hallowed relics. Therefore English had been the chief language of the nursery for three generations, and, until the accession of the last Earl, some of the family had always visited Castle Hall every third year.

But the last Earl was, unfortunately, one of the bad type, and he quarrelled with most of his relations. His brother died young, and, if he left no children, the Earldom would become extinct; but an older Barony would go in the female line, with the entailed estate, to the representative of the Lady Alice, who married Graf von Hohenstein.

The Earl de Roland had taken a great dislike to his foreign relations, and he was therefore most anxious for a son. But his first wife had only a daughter, who died in her first year, and was soon followed to the grave by the young mother. He then married a handsome young widow, who had three sons—on purpose, his enemies said, to ensure an heir. But the plan did not succeed, and just after his marriage, and about the time when Dorina was beginning to recover her reason, Fräulein Marta received a letter from Mrs. Lacy, to announce the Earl’s death.

The old housekeeper had, of course, heard several months before of Dorina’s supposed death, and most bitter had been her lamentation at the time; and now that the English property would have been inherited by her at the Earl’s death, her sorrow was redoubled. From all that had reached Mrs. Lacy’s ears, she fancied that the present heiress, Gräfinn Cunigunda, would be little to her liking, and her only hope was that she would never come to Castle Hall.

Frau Müller and her sister seemed of the same opinion, as they knew Cunigunda could not endure a country life, and if she ever visited Castle Hall it would probably be only from curiosity, just to see her property. Many circumstances combined to form this opinion, for an agent was sent by Count Rossi to transact the business in his wife’s name, and he brought orders that the house was to be shut up, and only the old housekeeper and one assistant was to remain in it.

Frau Müller possessed a good deal of the German Schwärmerei, mingled with strong English common-sense, and as she watched by the bedside of the still weak and suffering young lady, she thought over a plan which at first startled her less imaginative sister, the Fräulein Marta, but into which she was gradually persuaded to enter. The kind of veneration all the descendants of Martha Bevis kept up for the old Castle Hall inclined her at last to consent.

Frau Müller had been twice to England before the late Earl succeeded to the estates, and she had a most perfect recollection of every hole and corner in the beloved old place; and as Dorina persisted in her determination to allow all the family to believe in her death, Frau Müller became convinced that she could not do better than take her young mistress over to England, and install her in a suite of rooms at Castle Hall, to which no one had a clue except old Mrs. Lacy and Dame Bevis.

At first Dorina was frightened at the idea when it was proposed to her; but a longing to see the old place, of which she had heard so much, was soon awakened in her mind; and after they assured her that her secret would be most scrupulously kept, she gave her consent.

Fräulein Marta went first, in order to make arrangements and consult old Mrs. Lacy; and the result was that Dorina was soon afterwards taken to Castle Hall by Frau Müller, and installed with her in the suite of rooms on the upper floor of the half-ruined wing which communicates with the high tower of the ancient Castle.

These were the very rooms which puzzled me on my expedition, and were over the half-ruined ones into which I had contrived to climb. Their sitting-room was at the top of the old tower, and its window was the beautiful old oriel overhanging the deep ravine which I had endeavoured to sketch. From these rooms there was a passage which led to the old carved gallery of the chapel, which had been turned into a banqueting-room by the wicked Baron Hugh, and was afterwards turned into a ball-room by Cunigunda.

For many months Dorina remained undisturbed in her concealment, attended on by Frau Müller; and when at length the news arrived that the Count and Countess were coming to Castle Hall, Dorina resolved still to remain. Perhaps a vague longing to see the Count from her concealment may have inclined her to decide on the perilous plan. The first attempt to see him from a safe hiding-place was made on the night when Cunigunda first visited the ruined banqueting-hall. Dorina heard the sound of voices from the end of the passage near the rooms, so she groped in the dark to the door which opened in the gallery, and proceeding with noiseless steps, looked cautiously down upon the party, who were standing with candlesticks in their hands on the floor below. In her eagerness to see if the Count was among them, she stepped forward for a moment, and it unfortunately happened that Cunigunda was at that instant looking up towards the gallery.

Cunigunda’s shriek of horror, and all that followed, has been already described. Dorina drew back at once, without, as she thought, any one else having seen her, and never made another attempt to see the Count till the night of the ball, when she chanced for a moment to appear. Then the light shone upon her face—the minute afterwards she saw the floor give way, and Cunigunda was precipitated through the aperture, with her partner.

After that she seemed spell-bound with horror, and, forgetting everything else, she stood watching the efforts made to rescue the unfortunate pair. The mystery of the apparent trap-door was afterwards explained by Joe Naylor, who remembered that the joists which supported the square of marqueterie work had been moved away when the thieves entered the room from below, and quitting this in a hurry, they omitted to replace them properly, or to fasten down the stone door, which, as the reader will remember, opened by a spring in the floor.

WHILE Aunt Jane and I had been watching with intense interest the death-scene in the cameo boudoir, and Dorina’s extraordinary resurrection and most unexpected appearance there, the company had gradually dispersed. I believe this was entirely owing to the Duke of Dromoland’s tactful cleverness, for he saw that they were very much in the way; and yet their curiosity was so excited that they seemed unwilling to leave the house until some explanation had been given about the mysterious figure on the carved balcony, and the opening of the trap-door.

But the Duke very quietly took upon himself to order all the carriages to the door, and induced some few of the neighbours, with whom he was well acquainted, to intimate to the others that they had better go, as he was certain that nothing could be known till the next day, when the Count might be able to leave his dying wife, and have the strange occurrence investigated.

So we found all the guests had departed when we left the cameo-boudoir, after Cunigunda’s death. Of course my mind had been distracted from the thought of Carlo’s dangerous state, by the terrible sight of Cunigunda’s agony of mind and body, and then the appearance of the living Dorina; but as soon as all was over, and we left the Count and Dorina kneeling by the lifeless form of his beautiful wife, a sudden pang of redoubled anxiety to learn Carlo’s fate smote like a reproach upon my heart, and I followed Aunt Jane and Dr. Johnson to the library, where he had been left in a still unconscious state, before we went to see Cunigunda.

Dr. Johnson went into the room alone, for Aunt Jane said we had better remain outside till we heard the doctor’s report. As we stood there, in the silence and gloom of the now deserted halls and half-extinguished illuminations, mingled with the cold grey of dawn, I became more impressed with the reality and hopelessness of his state than when, nearly two hours before the living, moving crowd, and brilliant light, although clashing and unharmonious, spoke more of life and hope. And then, too, I had not witnessed the fatal termination of his companion in suffering, and I now felt convinced that Carlo must die. He seemed to have suffered even more than she had. I should never hear his melodious voice again, or be cheered by the sight of his loving eyes. For he had loved me, that was certain, before those fatal years of college life.

In this moment of apprehension, I made excuses for his change. I remembered the guileless sympathy which characterised his early youth—how easily such a disposition might have been led astray by apparent friends, in whom he unsuspiciously confided. I seemed suddenly to have grown ever so many years older in wisdom, and could reflect on and dissect his character and my own, as if I looked back on it from old age. Had I done so much better than Carlo in every respect?—had I not been proud and bitter, fickle and self-indulgent?—worse still, had I not, by my wild coquetry and foolish passion, sacrificed my dearest friend, marred the happiness for life of Norah—of the very person I loved best, and had a higher opinion of than I had of anyone in the world?

How could I blame Carlo for his foolish love of riches—for his having seemed to fall a victim to the fascination of the lovely syren, Cunigunda? Had not I bitterly murmured at the loss of my fortune?—in fact, during the time of this terrible suspense, I proceeded to make myself out to be far worse than Carlo in every respect; and now that I saw my faults, I longed to ask his forgiveness, and confess them all to him. And he would probably never see my face or hear my voice again!

While I tormented myself with self-reproaches of this kind, the cold blue dawn continued to increase, till the great hall and passages became fully visible in the hard light of day; and a new misery is never so keenly felt as when first broad daylight seems to intensify new perceptions, and deprives us of those shadowy illusions that often still linger through the first night of a great grief.

At last Dr. Johnson came to the door, and I fancied that he looked more hopeful, and, in answer to Aunt Jane’s inquiry, he said that recovery was possible, but the most complete quiet was necessary.

“It would be better that he should not see any well-known face at present,” added the doctor, as he looked at me; and I fancied he might have remarked some of the anxiety I felt, and of which I now began to feel suddenly ashamed.

Of course, this revulsion of feeling made my cheeks glow, and tended to confirm Dr. Johnson in his suspicions. Aunt Jane, who remarked my confusion, told me to go and seek for our cloaks, while she would inquire some more particulars of my cousin, the Marchese Spinola’s sufferings.

“NEVER be ashamed of kind feelings,” said Aunt Jane, as we drove off from the door of Castle Hall. “I saw you were quite annoyed because Dr. Johnson perceived that you felt a great interest in your cousin’s fate.”

“He could not have known that he was my cousin till you told him,” I said. “Besides——”

“Besides, in your anxiety you became, as you now think, too lenient to his faults.”

“Yes, I am sure I was.”

“No, I don’t think so. It is always better to err on the lenient side—to make excuses for the faults of others—we are then much more likely to be right than when we are only impressed by the glaringness of their errors.”

I found that Aunt Jane had not quitted the house of mourning without ascertaining that some one was left there to assist the surviving inmates, who had sense and discretion enough to be of use to Count Rossi, and also to his long-lost and now so strangely-discovered fiancée, present owner of the property.

The Duke of Dromoland and his energetic young wife had a long interview with Mrs. Lacy, after Dorina was induced to visit her dying cousin; and the result was that they promised to remain at the Hall after all the other visitors had left—for, as the shrewd old housekeeper thoughtfully reminded them, “the Lady Dorina will want some kind friend to be with her ladyship at such a trying time, and I should be sorry indeed the good Count should go away in a hurry, which he might do, seeing he had now no natural right in the place, because of his wife turning out not to be the real mistress of it.”

In fact, Mrs. Lacy’s quick eye saw that the Duke was just the right sort of person, not because he was a Duke, she afterwards declared; adding,

“He looked so kind and respectable-like—so very different from the other visitors who had been staying there ever since the Countess arrived; and the Duchess, too, did look so sensible and feeling-like that I am sure my Lady Dorina would be happier with her than with any other person, except Miss Vivian.”

Aunt Jane had told Mrs. Lacy that I had better not remain at the Hall at present, though she hoped, later, when I should be recovered more from my late illness, that I should come and see Dorina; and, on account of our relationship, that we should be a good deal together. I also found that Aunt Jane had most thoughtfully asked Dr. Johnson to keep us informed of Carlo’s state, as he would daily pass the door of our house on his way home.

A few days afterwards, just as we were expecting Dr. Johnson’s usual visit, a carriage drove up to the house, and, to our great surprise, we saw Mr. Mordaunt standing at the door. We saw through the window that he wore one of his most angry frowns, and I therefore anticipated some bad news. When the door was answered, he hurried into the room, and without going through the form of shaking hands, or inquiring after our health, he launched forth into a story which roused my deepest feelings, and made me more than sympathise with his fury.

It appeared that for some time past a series of abusive articles had appeared in some of the papers, reflecting on the character of my dear father, and Mr. Mordaunt had made many efforts to ascertain who the secret enemy was that could utter such cruel falsehoods. But he was unsuccessful until the day before, when, on calling at the office of one of the newspapers, he caught sight of a letter in Mr. H. Mordaunt’s handwriting.

It lay open on the table, and impelled by a feeling of suddenly suspicious anger, he seized hold of it, and, unperceived by the man who sat behind the desk in the office, put it in his pocket and went home. He found it to be the identical letter which had appeared the day before in the newspaper, and his first impulse was to seek Mr. H. Mordaunt, and confront him with his own letter.

On calling at his cousin’s house, he learnt that Mr. Mordaunt was at the Priory, so he went off by the first train and reached it the same evening. He took a fly from the station, and on driving through the park he met a carriage coming from the house.

It was a dark night, but by the light of the lamps he fancied he saw the pale face of his cousin. He passed so quickly that he could not be sure, but he afterwards regretted that he did not attempt to stop the carriage and ascertain the point; for when he reached the house he was informed that Mr. H. Mordaunt had just received a telegram from his sister in Paris, who was dangerously ill, and wished to see him immediately.

He then asked to see Mr. Vivian, but the butler said his master was at dinner with a large party, and he was certain that he would not like to be disturbed.

“I would have had it out with him—I’d have given him a good piece of my mind if I could but have got a sight of him,” said Mr. Mordaunt, with a violent thump on the table which almost upset the inkstand.

“Have you never yet succeeded in seeing that wonderful man?” inquired Aunt Jane.

“Yes, and you may well call him a wonderful man; and he’s no more like a Vivian than I am, but he is extraordinarily like my hopeful cousin, Mr. Henry. No, Miss Constance,” he added, as I put a chair near him, “I cannot sit down. I’m going on to Castle Hall, for I hear that the Duke of Dromoland is there, and I mean to get his advice in this matter, for he esteemed and loved your father, and he’s got more sense in his head than I have in mine, and he’s cool, too—very cool and quiet.”

“But,” interrupted Aunt Jane, “do you know all that has occurred at Castle Hall, and why the Duke is still remaining there?”

“Yes, I have heard the whole story; and right glad I am that the rightful heir has turned up, and that good-for-nothing—well, never mind, as she’s dead, poor woman, I’ll try to be charitable. See you to-morrow, when I have had a talk with the Duke. Good-bye,” and without even shaking hands with us he ran out, jumped into the fly, and we heard him roaring to the flyman to drive as quickly as possible to Castle Hall.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

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LONDON: PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE.

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