Several years rolled on in this way,and the sounds of mirth and wassail had long been strangers to the castle,when Sir Robert requested his lady,to her great astonishment,to invite some twenty or thirty of their friends to spend the Christmas,which was fast approaching,at the castle.Lady Ardagh gladly complied,and her sister Mary,who still continued unmarried,and Lady D--were of course included in the invitations.Lady Ardagh had requested her sisters to set forward as early as possible,in order that she might enjoy a little of their society before the arrival of the other guests;and in compliance with this request they left Dublin almost immediately upon receiving the invitation,a little more than a week before the arrival of the festival which was to be the period at which the whole party were to muster.
For expedition's sake it was arranged that they should post,while Lady D--'s groom was to follow with her horses,she taking with herself her own maid and one male servant.They left the city when the day was considerably spent,and consequently made but three stages in the first day;upon the second,at about eight in the evening,they had reached the town of K--k,distant about fifteen miles from Castle Ardagh.Here,owing to Miss F--d's great fatigue,she having been for a considerable time in a very delicate state of health,it was determined to put up for the night.They,accord-ingly,took possession of the best sitting-
room which the inn commanded,and Lady D--remained in it to direct and urge the preparations for some refreshment,which the fatigues of the day had rendered necessary,while her younger sister retired to her bed-chamber to rest there for a little time,as the parlour commanded no such luxury as a sofa.
Miss F--d was,as I have already stated,at this time in very delicate health;and upon this occasion the exhaustion of fatigue,and the dreary badness of the weather,combined to depress her spirits.
Lady D--had not been left long to herself,when the door communicating with the passage was abruptly opened,and her sister Mary entered in a state of great agitation;she sat down pale and trembling upon one of the chairs,and it was not until a copious flood of tears had relieved her,that she became sufficiently calm to relate the cause of her excitement and distress.It was simply this.Almost immediately upon lying down upon the bed she sank into a feverish and unrefreshing slumber;images of all grotesque shapes and startling colours flitted before her sleeping fancy with all the rapidity and variety of the changes in a kaleidoscope.
At length,as she described it,a mist seemed to interpose itself between her sight and the ever-shifting scenery which sported before her imagination,and out of this cloudy shadow gradually emerged a figure whose back seemed turned towards the sleeper;it was that of a lady,who,in perfect silence,was expressing as far as pantomimic gesture could,by wringing her hands,and throwing her head from side to side,in the manner of one who is exhausted by the over indulgence,by the very sickness and impatience of grief;the extremity of misery.For a long time she sought in vain to catch a glimpse of the face of the apparition,who thus seemed to stir and live before her.
But at length the figure seemed to move with an air of authority,as if about to give directions to some inferior,and in doing so,it turned its head so as to display,with a ghastly distinctness,the features of Lady Ardagh,pale as death,with her dark hair all dishevelled,and her eyes dim and sunken with weeping.
The revulsion of feeling which Miss F--d experienced at this disclosure--for up to that point she had contemplated the appearance rather with a sense of curiosity and of interest,than of anything deeper--was so horrible,that the shock awoke her perfectly.She sat up in the bed,and looked fearfully around the room,which was imperfectly lighted by a single candle burning dimly,as if she almost expected to see the reality of her dreadful vision lurking in some corner of the chamber.Her fears were,however,verified,though not in the way she expected;yet in a manner sufficiently horrible--for she had hardly time to breathe and to collect her thoughts,when she heard,or thought she heard,the voice of her sister,Lady Ardagh,sometimes sobbing violently,and sometimes almost shrieking as if in terror,and calling upon her and Lady D--,with the most imploring earnestness of despair,for God's sake to lose no time in coming to her.All this was so horribly distinct,that it seemed as if the mourner was standing within a few yards of the spot where Miss F--d lay.She sprang from the bed,and leaving the candle in the room behind her,she made her way in the dark through the passage,the voice still following her,until as she arrived at the door of the sitting-room it seemed to die away in low sobbing.