ll is stone
around, blank wall and hot pavement, how precious seems one shrub, how
lovely an enclosed and planted spot of ground!

There went a tradition that Madame Beck's house had in old days been a
convent. That in years gone by--how long gone by I cannot tell, but I
think some centuries--before the city had over-spread this quarter, and
when it was tilled ground and avenue, and such deep and leafy seclusion
as ought to embosom a religious house-that something had happened on
this site which, rousing fear and inflicting horror, had left to the
place the inheritance of a ghost-story. A vague tale went of a black
and white nun, sometimes, on some night or nights of the year, seen in
some part of this vicinage. The ghost must have been built out some
ages ago, for there were houses all round now; but certain
convent-relics, in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, yet
consecrated the spot; and, at the foot of one--a Methuselah of a
pear-tree, dead, all but a few boughs which still faithfully renewed
their perfumed snow in spring, and their honey-sweet pendants in
autumn--you saw, in scraping away the mossy earth between the
half-bared roots, a glimpse of slab, smooth, hard, and black. The
legend went, unconfirmed and unaccredited, but still propagated, that
this was the portal of a vault, imprisoning deep beneath that ground,
on whose surface grass grew and flowers bloomed, the bones of a girl
whom a monkish conclave of the drear middle ages had here buried alive
for some sin against her vow. Her shadow it was that tremblers had
feared, through long generations after her poor frame was dust; her
black robe and white veil that, for timid eyes, moonlight and shade had
mocked, as they fluctuated in the night-wind through the garden-thicket.

Independently of romantic rubbish, however, that old garden had its
charms. On summer mornings I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone;
on summer evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the rising
moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than
feel the freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the
gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful
about the roots of the doddered orchard giants. There was a large
berceau, above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a
smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all
along a high and grey wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of
beauty, and