CHAPTER III

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd?--SHAKESPEARE.

FRESH EMBARRASSMENTS.--AN INSULT FROM A SPECTRE.--GRAND DISCOVERIES.--A SHRIEK.--A TEAR.--A SIGH.--A BLUSH.--A SWOON.

It is a remark founded upon the nature of man, and universally credited by the thinking part of the world, that to suffer is an attribute of mortality.

Impressed with a due conviction of this important precept, our heroine but smiled as she heard Stiletto lock her door. It was now midnight, and she took up her lamp to examine the chamber. Rusty daggers, mouldering bones, and ragged palls, lay scattered in all the profusion of feudal plenty.

Several horrors now made their appearance; but the most uncommon was a winged eyeball that fluttered before her face.

Say, little, foolish, fluttering thing?

She began shrieking and adjusting her hair at a mirror, when lo! she beheld the reflection of a ghastly visage peeping over her shoulder! Much disconcerted, the trembling girl approached the bed. An impertinent apparition, with a peculiar nose, stood there, and made faces at her. She felt offended at the freedom, to say nothing of her being half dead with fright.

'Is it not enough,' thought she, 'to be harassed by beings of this world, but those of the next too must think proper to interfere? I am sure,' said she, as she raised her voice in a taunting manner, '_En verité_, I have no desire to meddle with _their_ affairs. _Sur ma vie_, I have no taste for brim-stone. So let me just advise a _certain_ inhabitant of a _certain_ world (not the _best_, I believe,) to think less of _my_ concerns, and more of _his own_.'

Having thus asserted her dignity, without being too personal, she walked to the casement in tears, and sang these simple lines, which she graced with intermittent sobs.

SONG

Alas, well-a-day, woe to me, Singing willow, willow, willow; My lover is far, far at sea. On a billow, billow, billow. Ah, Theodore, would thou could'st be, On my pillow, pillow, pillow!

Here she heaved a deep sigh, when, to her utter astonishment, a voice, as if from a chamber underneath; took up the tune with these words:

SONG

Alas, well-a-day, woe to me, Singing sorrow, sorrow, sorrow; A ducat would soon make me free, Could I borrow, borrow, borrow; And then I would pillow with thee, To-morrow, morrow, morrow!

Was it?--It was!--Yes, it _was_ the voice of her love, her life, her long-lost Theodore De Willoughby!!! How should she reach him? Forty times she ran round and round her chamber, with agitated eyes and distracted tresses.

Here we must pause a moment, and express our surprise at the negligence of the sylphs and sylphids, in permitting the ringlets of heroines to be so frequently dishevelled. O ye fat-cheeked little cherubims, who flap your innocent wings, and fly through oceans of air in a minute, without having a hair of your heads discomposed,--no wonder that such stiff ringlets should be made of gold!

At length Hysterica found a sliding pannel. She likewise found a moth-eaten parchment, which she sat down to peruse. But, gentle reader, imagine her emotions, on decyphering these wonderful words.

MANUSCRIPT

---- Six tedious years ---- ---- and all for what? ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- No sun, no moon. ---- ---- Murd ---- ---- Adul ---- ---- because I am the wife of Lord Belamour. ---- ---- then tore me from him, and my little Hysterica ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Cruel Stiletto! ---- ---- He confesses that he put the sleeping babe into a basket ---- ---- sent her to the Baroness de Violenci ---- ---- oaken cross ---- ---- Chalk ---- ---- bruised gooseberry ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I am poisoned ---- ---- a great pain across my back ---- ---- i ---- j ---- k ---- ---- Oh! ---- Ah! ---- Oh! ---- ---- ---- ----

_Fascinante Peggina Belamour._

This then was the mother of our heroine; and the MS. elucidated, beyond dispute, the mysteries which had hitherto hung over the birth of that unfortunate orphan.

We need not add that she fainted, recovered, passed through the pannel, discovered the dungeon of her Theodore; and having asked him how he did,

'Comment vous portez vous?'

fell into unsophisticated hysterics.