Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/195

Rh Inesilla. How well I remember reading it! It was in the summer, as I walked to and fro in an avenue, over which the elm boughs met; and below, large, old, unpruned laurels grew almost over the walk. It took a wonderful hold on me. I believe, for weeks after, I looked with suspicious eyes on every pleasant-spoken elderly gentleman who addressed me." Lady Mandeville.—"Do you remember the effect produced by the black hollyhock, hanging gloomily over the sepulchral white marble vase?" Emily.—" I like Inesilla herself so much." Edward Lorraine.—" It is the only beautiful English tale I know in which the supernatural agency is well managed. Our common ghosts are essentially vulgar." Lady Mandeville. "Sent on errands to reveal a murder or a money deposit." Edward Lorraine.—"Here the spiritual agency is so terrible and so solemn. Every day, and every hour, we are trenching upon the mighty and mysterious empire of the unknown; the shadows of old superstition flit dimmer and more dim before her eyes. We lay ghosts, not with holy word and crucifix, but with Abernethy and Dr. Hibbert. But let us grow as actual