could restore her to
the pathways she had abandoned--ah, _could_ it be forever?--upon the
earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady
Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was
slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in
her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of
motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had
no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the
phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length
convalescent--finally, well. Yet but a second more violent disorder
again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame,
at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were,
after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming
recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her
physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had thus,
apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated
by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the
nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by
trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and
pertinaciously, of the sounds--of the slight sounds--and of the unusual
motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this
distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She
had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with
feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her
emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of
the ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low
whisper, of sounds which she _then_ heard, but which I could not
hear--of motions which she _then_ saw, but which I could not perceive.
The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to
show her (what, let me confess it, I could not _all_ believe) that those
almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the
figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary
rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had
proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She
appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I
remembered where