othing but a little
cake and a glass of Red wine. From sunrise to sunset the Lady sat in her
cabinet among her Relics; and I was bidden to sit over against her on a
little stool. She would talk much, and, as it seemed to me wildly, in a
language which I could not understand, going towards her relics and
touching them in a strange manner. Then she would say to me, with a
sternness that chilled the marrow in my bones, "Child, Remember the Day:
Remember the Thirtieth of January." And she would often repeat that
word, "Remember," rocking herself to and fro. And more than once she
would say, "Blood for blood." Then Mistress Talmash would enter and
assay to Soothe her, telling her that what was past was past, and could
not be undone. Then she would take out a great Prayer-Book bound in Red
leather, and which had this strange device raised in an embosture of
gold, on either cover, and in a solemn voice read out long passages,
which I afterwards learned were from that service holden on the
anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles the First. She would go on
to read the Ritual for the King's Touching for the Evil, now expunged
from our Liturgy; and then Mistress Talmash would pray her to read the
joyful prayers for the twenty-ninth of May, the date of the happy
restoration of King Charles the Second. But that she would seldom do,
murmuring, "I dare not, I dare not. Tell not Father Ruddlestone." All
these things were very strange to me; but I grew accustomed to them in
time. And there seems to a solitary child, an immensity of time passing
between his first beginning to remember and his coming to eight years of
age.

[Illustration]

There is one thing that I must mention before this Lady ceases to be
Unknown to the reader. She was afflicted with a continual trembling of
the entire Frame. She was no paralytic, for to the very end she could
take her food and medicine without assistance; but she shook always like
a very Aspen. It had to do with her nerves, I suppose; and it was
perhaps for that cause she was attended for so many years by Doctor
Vigors; but he never did her any good in that wise; and the whole
College of Warwick Lane would, I doubt not, have failed signally had
they attempted her cure. Often I asked Mistress Talmash why the
Lady--for until her death I knew of no other name whereby to call
her--shook so; but the waiting-woman would chide me, and say that if I
asked questions she would shake me. So that I forebore