Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/85

78, and whether or not strictly true in all its parts, it has, even through the lapse of such a length of time, so powerfully affected with feelings of awe or pity the minds of the people around, as to prevent them from in any way altering or interfering with the place.

Many years ago, a lady came there to reside, bringing with her an only child, a daughter, then an infant a few months old. Though very young—she could scarcely have seen more than two-and-twenty summers—Mrs. Atherton, for such was the lady's name, was a widow. She was beautiful—very beautiful, but it was with the beauty of the frost-nipped bud—of the blighted flower. The fair, open forehead; the rich, clustering brown hair; the soft, dark eyes were there: but the brightness of those eyes was quenched, the cheek was wan and sunken, the merry laugh seemed to have quitted the now bloodless lips for ever. Her countenance wore usually an expression of sweetness and melancholy, but ever and anon it would be distorted by a look of the most extreme terror—and this occurred most usually in the night. Often she would start up suddenly from her sleep with a shriek, clasp her infant to her breast, and wander about the house for hours, not unfrequently till daybreak. For this, her child, her fondness and care were extreme, almost painful to witness: night and day it was ever at her side; she would not part with it for an instant. Yet she was not a fidgety, or, in the general acceptation of the term, a solicitous mother: colds, damp, and illness, seemed scarcely to have a place in her fears; but some sort of vague, undefined dread, connected with her infant, appeared constantly to hang over her soul.

For a long time after her arrival she never left the house; and, with the exception of Betsy, the only servant she had engaged—a good, simple, faithful creature, whose heart her mistress's sweetness of disposition had completely won—never, as far as possible, admitted any one into it. Not that she was much troubled with visitors, but she seemed suspicious and afraid even of the wood-cutters and their families, who principally inhabited the few houses scattered through the valley. At length, her child’s health almost gave way under so much confinement; its little cheek began to get pale, and its temper fretful; and Mrs. Atherton, though at first with fear and trembling, found it necessary to take it more into the fresh air. Her first walks did not reach beyond the garden and the little meadow adjoining; but, getting gradually more bold, she soon began to extend them along the woodland paths, or by the river's side—sometimes even to the nearest cottages of her poor neighbours. These rambles, which quickly brought back the roses to her little daughter's cheek, were not less beneficial to her own health and spirits. Years rolled on, and—whether from the gloomy dread on her mind having been caused by painful recollections which the lapse of time served to deaden, or from the non-arrival of some actual evil which she had feared—her sleep became more peaceful, her waking hours less anxious and suspicious, and those dread moments of terror rarer and more rare. Her cheek still remained white as the plain widow's cap which surrounded it, but its hollowness passed away; her eyes began once more to be lit up by some mild rays of hope, and a sweet quiet smile would now and then stray back to revisit her lips. Her love for her daughter, though it lost in a great measure its painful, anxious watching, seemed, if possible, to become even more tender; and she, on her part, returned it with equal affection. Seldom did a tear stand in Mary's bright blue eye but when she saw her