ncholy eyes seemed appealing to one out of the canvas. She was
dressed in a heavy white material like dimity, and held a few primroses
between her fingers. What an innocent, pathetic little bride the
stern-faced vicar must have brought home!

I read her epitaph afterwards when Uncle Max showed me her
grave,--'Priscilla, wife of Ralph Combermere, aged twenty, and her infant
son.' What a sad little inscription! But Uncle Max read something sadder
still one day. A letter in faded ink was found in a corner of the same
old garret, and the signature was 'Priscilla'; there was only one
sentence legible in the whole, and to whom it was written remained a
mystery: 'Trust me, dear love, that I shall ever do my duty, in spite of
flaunts and jeers and most unkindly looks; and if God spares me health,
which I cannot believe, He may yet right me in the eyes that no longer
look at me with fondness.'

Poor Priscilla! so her husband had ceased to love her. No wonder the poor
child dwindled and pined among 'the flaunts and jeers and most unkindly
looks' of her step-children. One could imagine her clasping her baby to
her sad heart as she closed her eyes to the bitter misunderstanding of
this life. 'Where the weary are at rest,'--they might have written those
words upon her tomb.

The thought of Priscilla used to haunt me when I roamed about the
passages on windy days; the old garret especially seemed haunted by her
memory. Uncle Max once said to me that he could have constructed a
romance out of her poor little history. 'She came from a place called
Ecclesbourne Hall,' he said, one day. 'She was an heiress; old Ralph
Combermere knew what he was about when he transplanted the pale primrose.
Do you know, Ursula, this room is supposed to be haunted? And one of the
maids told me seriously that Mistress Combermere walks here on windy
nights with her babe in her arms. Fancy such a report in an English
vicarage!'

When I reached the house the little maid who opened the door informed me
that Uncle Max was in his study: it was a large room with a bow-window
overlooking the garden, and I knew Uncle Max never used any other room
except for his meals. I had volunteered to announce myself. I was never
formal with Max, so I knocked at the door, and, without waiting to hear
his voice in reply, marched in without ceremony.

But the next moment I stood discomfited on the threshold, for instead of
Uncle Max's familiar face I saw a dark, closely-cropp