ce the Marchioness died?
'Alas! my lady,' replied Dorothee, 'so long--that I have ceased to count
the years! The place, to my mind, has mourned ever since, and I am sure
my lord's vassals have! But you have lost yourself, ma'amselle,--shall I
shew you to the other side of the chateau?'

Blanche enquired how long this part of the edifice had been built. 'Soon
after my lord's marriage, ma'am,' replied Dorothee. 'The place was large
enough without this addition, for many rooms of the old building were
even then never made use of, and my lord had a princely household too;
but he thought the antient mansion gloomy, and gloomy enough it is!'
Lady Blanche now desired to be shewn to the inhabited part of the
chateau; and, as the passages were entirely dark, Dorothee conducted her
along the edge of the lawn to the opposite side of the edifice, where,
a door opening into the great hall, she was met by Mademoiselle Bearn.
'Where have you been so long?' said she, 'I had begun to think some
wonderful adventure had befallen you, and that the giant of this
enchanted castle, or the ghost, which, no doubt, haunts it, had conveyed
you through a trap-door into some subterranean vault, whence you was
never to return.'

'No,' replied Blanche, laughingly, 'you seem to love adventures so well,
that I leave them for you to achieve.'

'Well, I am willing to achieve them, provided I am allowed to describe
them.'

'My dear Mademoiselle Bearn,' said Henri, as he met her at the door of
the parlour, 'no ghost of these days would be so savage as to impose
silence on you. Our ghosts are more civilized than to condemn a lady to
a purgatory severer even, than their own, be it what it may.'

Mademoiselle Bearn replied only by a laugh; and, the Count now entering
the room, supper was served, during which he spoke little, frequently
appeared to be abstracted from the company, and more than once remarked,
that the place was greatly altered, since he had last seen it. 'Many
years have intervened since that period,' said he; 'and, though the
grand features of the scenery admit of no change, they impress me with
sensations very different from those I formerly experienced.'

'Did these scenes, sir,' said Blanche, 'ever appear more lovely, than
they do now? To me this seems hardly possible.' The Count, regarding her
with a melancholy smile, said, 'They once were as delightful to me, as
they are now to you; the landscape is not changed, but time has changed