t them, as if almost a natural formation, was the old castle,
whose building dated many centuries back.

It was not large nor grand, but it was strong and picturesque, and I
used to wish that we lived in it rather than in the smart,
half-furnished apartment in the new edifice, which had been hastily got
ready for my reception. Incongruous as the two parts were, they were
joined into a whole by means of intricate passages and unexpected
doors, the exact positions of which I never fully understood. M. de la
Tourelle led me to a suite of rooms set apart for me, and formally
installed me in them, as in a domain of which I was sovereign. He
apologised for the hasty preparation which was all he had been able to
make for me, but promised, before I asked, or even thought of
complaining, that they should be made as luxurious as heart could wish
before many weeks had elapsed. But when, in the gloom of an autumnal
evening, I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors,
which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many
candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the
half-furnished salon, I clung to M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be
taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage, he seemed angry
with me, although he affected to laugh, and so decidedly put aside the
notion of my having any other rooms but these, that I trembled in
silence at the fantastic figures and shapes which my imagination called
up as peopling the background of those gloomy mirrors. There was my
boudoir, a little less dreary--my bedroom, with its grand and tarnished
furniture, which I commonly made into my sitting-room, locking up the
various doors which led into the boudoir, the salon, the passages--all
but one, through which M. de la Tourelle always entered from his own
apartments in the older part of the castle. But this preference of mine
for occupying my bedroom annoyed M. de la Tourelle, I am sure, though
he did not care to express his displeasure. He would always allure me
back into the salon, which I disliked more and more from its complete
separation from the rest of the building by the long passage into which
all the doors of my apartment opened. This passage was closed by heavy
doors and portieres, through which I could not hear a sound from the
other parts of the house, and, of course, the servants could not hear
any movement or cry of mine unless expressly summoned. To a girl
brought up