Page:Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).djvu/204

 attached to each other almost from childhood, made a vow of eternal fidelity. Mina was the name of the lady—her husband’s I forget, but it is not material. They parted. He had been for some time absent with his regiment, when, as his disconsolate lady was sitting alone in her chamber, she distinctly heard the well-known sound of his footsteps, and starting up beheld, not her husband, but his spectre, with a deep ghastly wound across his forehead, entering. She swooned with horror: when she recovered, the ghost told her that in future his visits should be announced by a passing-bell, and these words, distinctly whispered, ‘Mina, I am here!’ Their interviews now became frequent, till the woman fancied herself as much in love with the ghost as she had been with the man. But it was soon to prove otherwise. One fatal night she went to a ball:—what business had she there? She danced too; and, what was worse, her partner was a young Florentine, so much the counterpart of her lover, that she became estranged from his ghost. Whilst the young gallant conducted her in the waltz, and her ear drank in the music of his voice and words, a passing-bell tolled! She had been accustomed to the sound till it hardly excited her attention, and now lost in the attractions of her fascinating partner, she heard