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316 I cannot describe to you what an irresistible pressure of low spirits—almost of despair, had come over me, when I went for my ball-dress. When I had shut the door of this room, and was on my way up stairs, I could not help feeling as if I were to part from you, and from this life—yet that I had a long and dreary pilgrimage to go through,—many dark nights of suffering and sorrow,—before I could reach any home of rest. Certainly, the very air which I then inhaled was not the same element by which we are usually surrounded; indeed, I could scarcely breathe, and the pain of that conflict was such, that I felt cold drops, as if in the struggle with death, break out on my forehead. It is most certain, too, that I was not then alone on the staircase, though, for a long while, I did not venture to look round.

“You already know, Florentine, how fervently I prayed after our mother’s death,—but in vain,—that she would once more appear, and speak with me. Now I thought her ghost was moving behind me, and had come to punish and reprove me for my presumption in those prayers; yet it was a strange and foolish fancy, that she who was ever so good and kind, could thus have