iest, and urged on him the pernicious effect which
was thus produced on my patient's mind, I found him as fully imbued with
the spirit of credulity as the most hysterical housemaid of them all. He
solemnly declared to me that he had himself repeatedly seen the pale
lady sitting at the fatal window, when on his way to and from his home
beyond the hills; and moreover, that on the death of Lady Collingham,
which occurred at her daughter's birth, he had heard the long, shrill
death-scream echo through the mansion while engaged in the last offices
of the Church by the bedside of the dying lady.

"So I found it impossible to fight single-handed against these adverse
influences, and could only endeavor to divert the mind of my patient
into more healthy channels of thought. In this I succeeded perfectly.
She became an enthusiastic botanist, and our rambles in search of the
rare and lovely specimens which were to be found among the woods and
moors surrounding her dwelling did more for her health, both of body and
mind, than all the medical skill I could bring to bear on her melancholy
case.

"Four years had elapsed since I first took up my abode at
Collingham-Westmore. Miss Collingham had grown from a sickly child into
a singularly graceful young woman, full of bright intelligence, eager
for information, and with scarcely an outward trace remaining of her
former fragile health. Still those mysterious swoons occasionally
visited her, forming an insurmountable obstacle to her mingling in
general society, which she was in all other respects so well fitted to
adorn. They occurred without any warning or apparent cause; one moment
she would be engaged in animated conversation, and the next, white and
rigid as a statue, she would fall back in her chair insensible to all
outward objects, but rapt and carried away into a world of her own,
whose visions she would sometimes describe in glowing language, although
she retained no recollection whatever of them when she returned, as
suddenly and at as uncertain a period, to her normal condition. On one
of these occasions we were sitting, after dinner, in a large apartment
called the summer dining-room. Fruit and wine were on the table, and the
last red beams of the setting sun lighted up the distant woods, which
were in the first flush of their autumn glory. I turned to remark on the
beautiful effect of light to Miss Collingham, and at the very moment I
did so she fell back in one of her stra