d,
hastening towards it, perceived the old housekeeper. 'Dear ma'amselle!
is it you?' said Dorothee, 'How could you find your way hither?' Had
Blanche been less occupied by her own fears, she would probably have
observed the strong expressions of terror and surprise on Dorothee's
countenance, who now led her through a long succession of passages and
rooms, that looked as if they had been uninhabited for a century,
till they reached that appropriated to the housekeeper, where Dorothee
entreated she would sit down and take refreshment. Blanche accepted the
sweet meats, offered to her, mentioned her discovery of the pleasant
turret, and her wish to appropriate it to her own use. Whether
Dorothee's taste was not so sensible to the beauties of landscape as her
young lady's, or that the constant view of lovely scenery had deadened
it, she forbore to praise the subject of Blanche's enthusiasm, which,
however, her silence did not repress. To Lady Blanche's enquiry of
whither the door she had found fastened at the end of the gallery led,
she replied, that it opened to a suite of rooms, which had not been
entered, during many years, 'For,' added she, 'my late lady died in one
of them, and I could never find in my heart to go into them since.'

Blanche, though she wished to see these chambers, forbore, on observing
that Dorothee's eyes were filled with tears, to ask her to unlock them,
and, soon after, went to dress for dinner, at which the whole party met
in good spirits and good humour, except the Countess, whose vacant mind,
overcome by the languor of idleness, would neither suffer her to be
happy herself, or to contribute to the happiness of others. Mademoiselle
Bearn, attempting to be witty, directed her badinage against Henri,
who answered, because he could not well avoid it, rather than from any
inclination to notice her, whose liveliness sometimes amused, but whose
conceit and insensibility often disgusted him.

The cheerfulness, with which Blanche rejoined the party, vanished, on
her reaching the margin of the sea; she gazed with apprehension upon
the immense expanse of waters, which, at a distance, she had beheld only
with delight and astonishment, and it was by a strong effort, that she
so far overcame her fears as to follow her father into the boat.

As she silently surveyed the vast horizon, bending round the distant
verge of the ocean, an emotion of sublimest rapture struggled to
overcome a sense of personal danger