Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/72

62 but now, with her brave, bold sailor by her side, she smiled a¢ her old childish fears,—at least when he laughed at her recital of them. She would not, however, on any account, allow her little Victor to sleep in the first ante-chamber with the trembling waiting-maid, but placed the child's crib close to her own bed, and often during the long, dark, and stormy autumnal night, when the wind shook the panes of glass, and howled through the adjacent forest, and she was wakened by its violence, she turned quickly, and with a beating heart, towards the child, leaned over his little bed, and felt unhappy until she had ascertained that her darling was sleeping soundly and peacefully.

"Well!" said her husband, the next morning, when the sun was already pretty high in the heavens, and cast his cheerful rays through the narrow easements of these haunted chambers—"well, dearest Adelgunda, have you heard or seen any spectre last night—been visited in any way by a ghost?"

"No," she replied, laughingly, as the bright sunshine restored her courage; "there was but one spirit near me last night—one dear, good spirit;" and she embraced her husband.

"And you, Annette?" cried the incredulous visitor to the poor waiting-maid, "I hope you have not been disturbed by the ghosts either?"

But Annette, who was half dead from fear, asserted that she had not closed her eyes the whole night; that she had distinctly heard sighs and groans, and heavy footsteps up and down the floor; and there had been many other frightful things that she could not describe.

Now, in the cheering daylight, Adelgunda laughed heartily at these fancies, as she called them; but the previous night she would not have done so,—at least not with a heart so much at ease.

"I wonder what his uncle and aunt will say of my little Victor, now that he is nicely dressed, and not ao sleepy and crass as he was last night, after that long, fatiguing journey!" said Adelgunda to Annette, with a mother's pride in her pretty boy, and while they were both engaged in arranging his curly hair, and putting on his handsome new green dress.

Adelgunda's husband had risen early and gone out to stroll round the old castle, and the former young lady of the mansion, who had now become a wife and mother, took up her little son in her arms to go down to her sister-in-law, who had already sent to inquire how she had slept, and to let her know that breakfast was ready.

Humming an air, Adelgunda proceeded with her light burden through the dear old well-remembered passages where her very footsteps echoed, until she came close to the door which opened into the picture-gallery; she then stopped, seized suddenly with a strong impulse to enter it, while a strange, and foreboding of evil filled her heart. Influenced, as if were, by an invincible power over which she had no control, she laid her hand upon the lock, turned it, and stood, she scarcely knew how, in presence of the mute family, who seemed gazing on her from both sides. Adelgunda's heart beat quickly; recollections from her childhood and her youthful days began to rush back on her. These aristocratic feelings, which had so long slumbered, began to start up in her mind, and she dared not look towards the terrible lady at the extreme end, for fear of meeting her angry, implacable glance.