ccountable depression. This unfortunately was too true. On that night
she experienced a series of such wild and frightful visions as, when she
was startled out of them, made her dread to go again to sleep. The white
hare, the Black Spectre, but, above all, the fearful expression her
alarmed fancy had felt in Woodward's eye, which was riveted upon her,
she thought, with a baleful and demoniacal glance, that pierced and
prostrated her spirit with its malignant and supernatural power; all
these terrible images, with fifty other incoherent chimeras, flitted
before the wretched girl's imagination during her feverish slumbers.
Towards morning she sank into a somewhat calmer state of rest, but still
with occasional and flitting glimpses of the same horrors.

So far the master-spirit had set, at least, a portion of his machinery
in motion, in order to work out his purposes; but we shall find that his
designs became deeper and blacker as he proceeded in his course.

In a few days Alice became somewhat relieved from the influence of these
tumultuous and spectral phantasms which had run riot in her terrified
fancy; and this was principally owing to the circumstance of her having
prevailed upon one of the maid-servants, a girl named Bessy Mangan,
Barney Casey's sweetheart, to sleep privately in her room. The attack
had reduced and enfeebled her very much, but still she was slightly
improved and somewhat relieved in her spirits. The shock, and the
nervous paroxysm that accompanied it, had nearly passed away, and she
was now anxious, for the sake of her health, to take as much exercise
as she could. Still--still--the two leading thoughts would recur
to her--that of Charles's treachery, and the terrible gift of curse
possessed by his brother Henry; and once more her heart would sink to
the uttermost depths of distress and terror. The supernatural, however,
in the course of a little time, prevailed, as it was only reasonable
to suppose it would in such a temperament as hers; and as her mind
proceeded to struggle with the two impressions, she felt that her dread
of Woodward was gradually gaining upon and absorbing the other. Her
fear of him, consequently, was deadly; that terrible and malignant
eye--notwithstanding its dark brilliancy and awful beauty, alas! too,
significant of its power--was constantly before her imagination, gazing
upon her with a fixed, determined, and mysterious look, accompanied by
a smile of triumph, which deepene