Then, taking a night lamp, she invited Capitola to come and conducted

her to an old-fashioned upper chamber, where a cheerful fire was

burning on the hearth. Here the young girls sat down before the fire

and improved their acquaintance by an hour's conversation. After which

Clara arose, and saying, "I sleep immediately below your room, Miss

Black; if you should want anything rap on the floor and I shall hear

you and get up," she wished her guest a good night's rest and retired

from the room.

Cap was disinclined to sleep; a strange superstitious feeling which she

could neither understand nor throw off had fallen upon her spirits.

She took the night lamp in her hand and got up to examine her chamber.

It was a large, dark, oak-paneled room, with a dark carpet on the floor

and dark-green curtains on the windows and the bedstead. Over the

mantelpiece hung the portrait of a most beautiful black-haired and

black-eyed girl of about fourteen years of age, but upon whose

infantile brow fell the shadow of some fearful woe. There was something

awful in the despair "on that face so young" that bound the gazer in an

irresistible and most painful spell. And Capitola remained standing

before it transfixed, until the striking of the hall clock aroused her

from her enchantment. Wondering who the young creature could have been,

what had been her history and, above all, what had been the nature of

that fearful woe that darkened like a curse her angel brow, Capitola

turned almost sorrowfully away and began to prepare for bed.

She undressed, put on the delicate nightclothes Clara had provided for

her use, said her evening prayers, looked under the bed--a precaution

taken ever since the night upon which she had discovered the

burglars--and, finding all right, she blew out her candle and lay down.

She could not sleep--many persons of nervous or mercurial temperaments

cannot do so the first night in a strange bed. Cap was very mercurial,

and the bed and room in which she lay were very strange; for the first

time since she had had a home to call her own she was unexpectedly

staying all night away from her friends, and without their having any

knowledge of her whereabouts. She was conjecturing, half in fear and

half in fun, how Old Hurricane was taking her escapade and what he

would say to her in the morning. She was wondering to find herself in

such an unforeseen position as that of a night guest in the mysterious

Hidden House--wondering whether this was the guest chamber in which the

ghost appeared to the officer and these were the very curtains that the

pale lady drew at night. While her thoughts were thus running over the

whole range of circumstances around her singular position, sleep

overtook Capitola and speculation was lost in brighter visions.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024