Nightmare Abbey

cognition of a mermaid, Scythrop, retiring to his tower, found his study preoccupied. A stranger, muffled in a cloak, was sitting at his table. Scythrop

y your physiognomy, that you may be trusted;’ and revealed to the astonished Scythrop a female form and countenance of dazzling grace and beauty, with long flowing hair of raven blackness, and large black eyes of almost oppre

as frightful

richly c

ul exce

his study at that hour. If the logical consecutiveness of this conclusion be not manifest to my readers, I am sorry for their dulness, and must refer them, for more ample

stonishment, though not in itself fear, is nevertheless a good stage towards it, and is, indeed, as it we

n introduced to you by an old woman, it would have been a matter of course: can the division of two or three walls, and

ticular relations, then, on the sudden appearance of one object of the class divested of those accompaniments, the essential difference of the relat

y. You are the author of a treatise, called “Philosophical Gas

delighted at this first

ity of seeking refuge from an atrocious persecution. I had no friend to whom I could apply; and, in the midst of my difficulties, a

said Scythrop, more and more am

I can remain concealed from the indefatigable search that is being made for me. I have been

a small suite of unknown apartments in the main building, which I defy any creature living to detect. If you would like to remain

world say what it will. I am rich enough to set it at defiance. It is the tyrant of

your looks,’ she added, ‘that you think all this very strange. When you know me better, your surprise will cease. I submit not to be an accomplice in my sex’s slaver

othing to what she had already communicated, that she was shunning an atrocious persecution. Scythrop thought of Lord C. and the Alien Act, and said, ‘As you will not tell your name, I suppose it is in the green bag.’ Stella, not understanding what he meant, was silent; and Scythrop, translating silence into

r favourite passages from Schiller and Goethe, and to her encomiums on the sublime Spartacus Weishaupt, the immortal founder of the sect of the Illuminati. Scythrop found that his soul had a greater capacity of love than the image of Marionetta had filled. The form of Stella took possession of every vacant corner of the cavity, and by degrees displaced that of Marionetta from many of the outworks of the citadel; though the latter still held possession of the keep. He judged, from his new friend calling herself Stella, that, if it were not her real name, she was an admirer of the principles of the German play from which she had taken it, and took an opportunity of leading the

r of them, but he trembled when he imagined the possibility that some fatal discovery might deprive him of both. The old proverb concerning two strings to a bow gave him some gleams of comfort; but that concerning two stools occurred to him more frequently, and covered his forehead with a cold perspiration. With Stella, he could indulge freely in all his romantic and philosophical visions. He could build castles in the air, and she would pile towers and turrets on the imaginary edifices. With Marionetta it was otherwise: she knew nothing of the world and society beyond the sphere of her own experience. Her life was all music and sunshine, and she wondered what any one could see to complain of in such a pleasant state of things. She loved Scythrop, she hardly knew why; indeed she was not always sure that she loved him at all: she felt her fondness increase or diminish in an inverse ratio to his. When she had manoeuvred him into a fever of passionate love, she often felt and always assumed indifference: if she found that her coldness was contagious, and that Scythrop either was, or pretended to be, as indifferent as herself, she would become doubly kind, and raise him again to that elevation from which she had previously thrown him down. Thus, when his love was flowin