fire on the hearth, strange thoughts and
dreams floated over her; she started at mysterious cracks in the
wainscotting from time to time, and beheld in the dark corners of
the great room forms that seemed grotesque and phantom-like till she
went up to them and resolved them into familiar bits of furniture or
gowns and caps of Mrs. Labadie. She repeated half aloud numerous
Psalms and bits of poetry, but in the midst would come some
disturbing noise, a step or a shout from the street, though the
chamber being at the back of the house looking into the Park few of
such sounds penetrated thither. She began to think of King
Charles's last walk from St. James's to Whitehall, and of the fatal
window of the Banqueting-hall which had been pointed out to her, and
then her thoughts flew back again to that vault in the castle yard,
and she saw only too vividly in memory that open vault, veiled
partly by nettles and mulleins, which was the unblest, unknown grave
of the old playfellow who had so loved her mother and herself.
Perhaps she had hitherto more dwelt on and pitied the living than
the dead, as one whom fears and prayers still concerned, but now as
she thought of the lively sprite-like being who had professed such
affection for her, and for whom her mother had felt so much, and
recollected him so soon and suddenly cut down and consigned to that
dreary darkness, the strange yearning spirit dismissed to the
unknown world, instead of her old terror and repulsion, a great
tenderness and compunction came over her, and she longed to join
those who would in two days more be keeping All Souls' Day in
intercessions for their departed, so as to atone for her past
dislike; and there was that sort of feeling about her which can only
be described by the word 'eerie.' To relieve it Anne walked to the
window and undid a small wicket in the shutter, so as to look out
into the quiet moonlight park where the trees cast their long
shadows on the silvery grass, and there was a great calm that seemed
to reach her heart and spirits.

Suddenly, across the sward towards the palace there came the slight,
impish, almost one-sided figure, with the peculiar walk, swift
though suggestive of a limp, the elfish set of the plume, the
foreign adjustment of short cloak. Anne gazed with wide-stretched
eyes and beating heart, trying to rally her senses and believe it
fancy, when the figure crossed into a broad streak of light cast by
the lamp over the door