The Japha Mansion
“Ah what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, could any spot on earth Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it has witnessed; render back an echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod.
Unexplained actions if long continued, lose after awhile their interest if not their mystery. The aged lady who now for many years had been seen at every nightfall to leave her home, traverse the village streets, enter the Japha mansion, remain there an hour and then reissue with tremulous steps and bowed head, had become so common a sight to the village eye, that even the children forgot to ask what her errand was, or why she held her head so hopefully when she entered, or looked so despondent when she came forth.
But to Paula, for reasons already mentioned, this secret and persistent vigil in a forsaken and mysterious dwelling, was fraught with a significance which had never lost its power either to excite her curiosity or to arouse her imagination. Many a time had she gone home from some late encounter with the aged lady, to brood by the hour upon the expression of that restless eye which in its wanderings never failed to turn upon her own youthful face and linger there in the manner I have already noted. She thought of it by night, she thought of it by day. She felt herself drawn to that woman’s suffering heart as by invisible cords. To understand the feelings of this desolate being, she had even studied the face of that old house, until she knew it under its every aspect. Often in shutting her eyes at night, she would perceive as in a mirror a vision of its long gray front, barred door and sealed windows shining in the moon, save where the deep impenetrable shadows of its two guardian poplars