id I.

"Dismal!" said she. "Ay, now, I daresay, because there's a curse on it;
but not then. Oh, it was a pleasant place in old M. de Beaugency's time!
besides, my poor mistress loved it for the sake of the happy days she
had seen there; and when the period approached that she was to be
confined of her first child, she entreated her husband to bring her
here. She wanted to have my mother with her, who had been like a mother
to her; and as she told him she was sure she should die if he kept her
in Catalonia, he yielded to her wishes, and we came. The doctor was
spoken to, and everything arranged; and she was so pleased, poor thing,
at the thoughts of having a baby, that as we used to sit together making
the clothes for the little creature that was expected, she chatted away
so gayly about what she would do with it, and how we should bring it up,
that I saw she was now really beginning to forget that she was not
married to the husband her young heart had chosen.

"Well, madame," continued Rosina, after wiping her sightless eyes with
the corner of her white apron--"we were all, as you will understand,
happy enough, and looking forward shortly to the birth of the child,
when, one afternoon, while my master and mistress were out driving, and
I was looking through the rails of the garden gate for the carriage--for
they had already been gone longer than usual--I saw a figure coming
hastily along the road toward where I stood, a figure which, as it drew
near, brought my heart into my mouth, for I thought it was an
apparition! I just took a second look, and then, overcome with terror, I
turned and ran toward the house; but before I reached it, he had opened
the gate, and was in the garden."

"Who was?" said I.

"M. Eugene, madame--Eugene de Beaugency, my lady's cousin," answered
Rosina.

"'Rosina!' cried he, 'Rosina! don't be frightened. I'm no ghost, I
assure you. I suppose you heard I was killed? But I was not, you see; I
was only taken prisoner, and here I am, alive and well, thank God! How's
my cousin? Where is she?'

"I leave you to judge, madame, how I felt on hearing this," continued
the old woman. "A black curtain seemed to fall before my eyes, on which
I could read woe! woe! woe! I could not tell what form it would take; I
never could have guessed the form it did take; but I saw that behind the
dark screen which vailed the future from my eyes there was nothing but
woe on the face of the earth for those three crea