omy chambers.

In that house, at the time I now speak of, lodged the mysterious
Liehbur. It was late at noon, and she sat alone in her apartment, which
was darkened so as to exclude the broad and peering sun. There was no
trick, nor sign of the fallacious art she professed, visible in the
large and melancholy room. One or two books in the German language lay
on the table beside which she sat: but they were of the recent poetry,
and not of the departed dogmas, of the genius of that tongue. The
enthusiast was alone; and, with her hand supporting her chin, and her
eyes fixed on vacancy, she seemed feeding in silence the thoughts that
flitted to and fro athwart a brain which had for years lost its certain
guide; a deserted mansion, whence the lord had departed, and where
spirits not of this common life had taken up their haunted and desolate
abode. And never was there a countenance better suited to the character
which this singular woman had assumed. Rich, thick, auburn hair was
parted loosely over a brow in which the large and full temples would
have betrayed to a phrenologist the great preponderance which the
dreaming and the imaginative bore over the sterner faculties. Her eyes
were deep, intense, but of the bright and wandering glitter which is so
powerful in its effect on the beholder, because it betokens that thought
which is not of this daily world and inspires that fear, that sadness,
that awe, which few have looked on the face of the insane and not
experienced. Her features were still noble, and of the fair Greek
symmetry of the painter's Sibyl; but the cheeks were worn and hollow,
and one bright spot alone broke their marble paleness; her lips were,
however, full, and yet red, and by their uncertain and varying
play, gave frequent glimpses of teeth lustrously white; which, while
completing the beauty of her face, aided--with somewhat of a fearful
effect--the burning light of her strange eyes, and the vague, mystic
expression of her abrupt and unjoyous smile. You might see when her
features were, as now, in a momentary repose, that her health was
broken, and that she was not long sentenced to wander over that world
where the soul had already ceased to find its home; but the instant she
spoke, her colour deepened, and the brilliant and rapid alternations of
her countenance deceived the eye, and concealed the ravages of the worm
that preyed within.

"Yes," said she, at last breaking silence, and soliloquising in the