Page:The Keepsake for 1838.djvu/239

 maintained that a white shadow was visible to her, and that she felt as if there must be a grave beneath it.

The Baron, though with evident agitation, attempted to rally her on the flights of her imagination; but she solemnly, and urgently persisted in her idea.

At that moment, the unholy sepulture of the lady whose dark fate Hartmann had recounted, suddenly recurred to my mind; and I resolved, with the consent of the Baron, to cause search to be made for her remains.

I immediately summoned Hartmann and some workmen with the proper implements; when the process of excavation commenced. We soon found traces in the wall, which confirmed our conjecture; and, when a large stone was removed, a coffin was discovered.

I commanded the lid to be removed; and the lovely shape I had beheld in my dream, Adelaide’s aerial counterpart, lay bodily before me! She was clad in the well-remembered drapery, embroidered with silver stars; her countenance was fair, as if untouched by death, and smiling in magic loveliness. Thus had Adelaide appeared to me on that eventful night, and in the dream which first led me to her beloved presence.

“The Silver Lady!” ejaculated the workmen, and Hartmann, in tones of consternation and horror.

This exclamation, and the drapery with silver stars, which I had never seen my Adelaide wear, now first and instantaneously awakened in me a terrific doubt whether the night wanderer were really a mortal being! My glance, at that accursed moment of ineffable agony, while the blood stagnated in my veins, and the hair bristled on my head, fell on the hands of the corse; when—Oh God!—all my fears were too soon and too fatally confirmed! My ring was on its finger! and I—was the affianced husband of a dead bride!

I had stood, perhaps, for some minutes, dumb and motion-