ate "horrible recesses," discover a room
handsomely provided with a trapdoor, and determine to reside in a
dwelling so congenial, though, as La Motte judiciously remarks, "not in
all respects strictly Gothic." After a few days, La Motte finds that
somebody is inquiring for him in the nearest town. He seeks for a hiding-
place, and explores the chambers under the trapdoor. Here he finds, in a
large chest--what do you suppose he finds? It was a human skeleton! Yet
in this awful vicinity he and his wife, with Adeline (the fair stranger)
conceal themselves. The brave Adeline, when footsteps are heard, and a
figure is beheld in the upper rooms, accosts the stranger. His keen eye
presently detects the practicable trapdoor, he raises it, and the
cowering La Motte recognises in the dreaded visitor--his own son, who had
sought him out of filial affection.

Already Madame La Motte has become jealous of Adeline, especially as her
husband is oddly melancholy, and apt to withdraw into a glade, where he
mysteriously disappears into the recesses of a genuine Gothic sepulchre.
This, to the watchful eyes of a wife, is proof of faithlessness on the
part of a husband. As the son, Louis, really falls in love with Adeline,
Madame La Motte becomes doubly unkind to her, and Adeline now composes
quantities of poems to Night, to Sunset, to the Nocturnal Gale, and so
on.

In this uncomfortable situation, two strangers arrive in a terrific
thunderstorm. One is young, the other is a Marquis. On seeing this
nobleman, "La Motte's limbs trembled, and a ghastly paleness overspread
his countenance. The Marquis was little less agitated," and was, at
first, decidedly hostile. La Motte implored forgiveness--for what?--and
the Marquis (who, in fact, owned the Abbey, and had a shooting lodge not
far off) was mollified. They all became rather friendly, and Adeline
asked La Motte about the stories of hauntings, and a murder said to have
been, at some time, committed in the Abbey. La Motte said that the
Marquis could have no connection with such fables; still, there _was_ the
skeleton.

Meanwhile, Adeline had conceived a flame for Theodore, the young officer
who accompanied his colonel, the Marquis, on their first visit to the
family. Theodore, who returned her passion, had vaguely warned her of an
impending danger, and then had failed to keep tryst with her, one
evening, and had mysteriously disappeared. Then unhappy Adeline dreamed
about a