pect of the grave. Yet
life--intenser life than thrills the soul of Beauty in her bridal
bower, dwelt in the working of those thin compressed lips--lurked
beneath those heavy downcast lids, burned in those dark wild eyes,
whose flashes I more than once arrested ere she passed from before me.
Writing at the interval of time I now do, and disposed as I am to deal
severely with the fantastic imaginations of my youth, I have not in
any way exaggerated the appearance this singular female exhibited.
Should the reader suspect me of such an error, a moment's reflection
will convince him that she who could--from whatever motive it might
be--adopt the strange purpose to which she had devoted her solitary
life, must have been characterized by energies of mind that would of
necessity have filled and informed her frame, and imparted to her an
air that altogether distinguished her from ordinary persons. I
observed that she seemed wholly regardless of what was passing around
her, appearing to be entirely absorbed in one great duty--the business
of her existence--that of attending on the individual whose steps she
so closely followed. He made no movement that, I thought, escaped her.
Insensible, apparently, to every thing else, her glance showed that
never for a moment did she cease to watch him, eager, my fancy
suggested, to catch the slightest indication of his turning round and
encountering her gaze. If so, her vigilance, as long as I beheld the
Pair, was in vain. The man never ventured to look behind him. In half
an hour they had vanished from the street.

They re-appeared in the evening again as usual, and then, and for
several subsequent days, (for I did not feel well enough to undergo
some twenty or thirty hours' sea-sickness in the packet that offered
the Saturday after my arrival,) I took a morbid and eager pleasure in
awaiting the visits and observing the motions of those inscrutable
beings. Sainsbury and his son were amused, but not surprised, at the
anxiety I evinced to obtain a nearer insight into Maunsell's history.
My curiosity and vigilance were, however, fruitless. The Pair
performed their revolutions with a cold uniformity, a silent
perseverance, that I found sufficiently monotonous; and at length,
after one or two baffled attempts to engage the man in conversation,
and which never proceeded beyond a few common-place words, (about his
companion there was a something indefinable that prevented me from
ever addressing