The perusal of this story was ill-calculated to dispel Antonia’s melancholy. She had naturally a strong inclination to the marvellous; and her nurse, who believed firmly in apparitions, had related to her when an infant so many horrible adventures of this kind, that all Elvira’s attempts had failed to eradicate their impressions from her daughter’s mind. Antonia still nourished a superstitious prejudice in her bosom: she was often susceptible of terrors which, when she discovered their natural and insignificant cause, made her blush at her own weakness. With such a turn of mind, the adventure which she had just been reading sufficed to give her apprehensions the alarm. The hour and the scene combined to authorize them. It was the dead of night: she was alone, and in the chamber once occupied by her deceased mother. The weather was comfortless and stormy: the wind howled around the house, the doors rattled in their frames, and the heavy rain pattered against the windows. No other sound was heard. The taper, now burnt down to the socket, sometimes flaring upwards shot a gleam of light through the room, then sinking again seemed upon the point of expiring.