r my hair, and roll upon the ground with shrieks of
merriment. They little thought they had married her to a madman.

'Stay. If they had known it, would they have saved her? A sister's
happiness against her husband's gold. The lightest feather I blow into
the air, against the gay chain that ornaments my body!

'In one thing I was deceived with all my cunning. If I had not been
mad--for though we madmen are sharp-witted enough, we get bewildered
sometimes--I should have known that the girl would rather have been
placed, stiff and cold in a dull leaden coffin, than borne an envied
bride to my rich, glittering house. I should have known that her heart
was with the dark-eyed boy whose name I once heard her breathe in her
troubled sleep; and that she had been sacrificed to me, to relieve the
poverty of the old, white-headed man and the haughty brothers.

'I don't remember forms or faces now, but I know the girl was beautiful.
I know she was; for in the bright moonlight nights, when I start up
from my sleep, and all is quiet about me, I see, standing still and
motionless in one corner of this cell, a slight and wasted figure with
long black hair, which, streaming down her back, stirs with no earthly
wind, and eyes that fix their gaze on me, and never wink or close. Hush!
the blood chills at my heart as I write it down--that form is HERS; the
face is very pale, and the eyes are glassy bright; but I know them well.
That figure never moves; it never frowns and mouths as others do, that
fill this place sometimes; but it is much more dreadful to me, even
than the spirits that tempted me many years ago--it comes fresh from the
grave; and is so very death-like.

'For nearly a year I saw that face grow paler; for nearly a year I saw
the tears steal down the mournful cheeks, and never knew the cause. I
found it out at last though. They could not keep it from me long. She
had never liked me; I had never thought she did: she despised my wealth,
and hated the splendour in which she lived; but I had not expected that.
She loved another. This I had never thought of. Strange feelings came
over me, and thoughts, forced upon me by some secret power, whirled
round and round my brain. I did not hate her, though I hated the boy she
still wept for. I pitied--yes, I pitied--the wretched life to which her
cold and selfish relations had doomed her. I knew that she could not
live long; but the thought that before her death she might give birth
to