The Argosy — page 361: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Master of Greylands. 341 Nunnery : she knew she should not see the child, but it was a satis- faction only to look at the window of the room that contained her. Soon Madame Guise came to the gate of the chapel ruins ; and some impulse prompted her to open it and enter. But she first of all looked cautiously around to make sure she was not being watched : once let it be known that she held any particular interest in this place and her connection with him who had been last within it might be suspected. When we hold a dangerous secret, the conscience is more than sensitive: and Madame Guise was no exception. She crossed over the ruins, and stood looking out on the sea, so grand from thence. After she had gazed her fill, she turned to the Fnar’s Keep, and made her way into it by the mouldering door in the once firm walls. Oh, but it was dark here! By what she could make out, when her sight got used to the gloom, she seemed to be amidst the arches of some pillared cloisters. While looking on this side and that side, striving to pierce their mysteries, taking a step this way and a step that, and trembling all the while lest she should see the revenant, said to haunt the place, a dreadful sound, like the huge fluttering of large wings arose above in the arches. Poor Charlotte Guise, superstitious by nature and education, and but young in years yet, was seized with a perfect acme of terror; of terror too great to scream. Was it the spirit of her husband, striving to communicate with her, she thought—and oh blame her not too greatly. She had been reared in the fear of ‘‘revenants ; ”’ she earnestly believed that the dead were sometimes permitted to re- visit the earth. Silence supervened, and her terror grew somewhat less intense. ‘Is your grave here, Anthony?” she murmured; “are you buried in some corner of this lonesome place, away from the eye of man? Oh, hear me while I repeat my vow to search out this dreadful mystery! To the utmost of the power that circumstances and secresy leave me, will I strive to find you, Anthony; and bring home to Mr. Castlemaine " , A worse noise than before; an awful fluttering and flapping right above her head. She screamed out now, terrified nearly to death. The echoes repeated her scream, and the rushing wings, with another kind of scream, not half so shrill as hers, went out through the broken wall and flew across the sea. She felt just as though she were dropping into her grave. Was it the revenant of the place ?—or was it the revenant of her husband ?—wé&at was it? Lying there, her face prone against a column, Charlotte asked herself these dread questions: and never once, until her alarm was somewhat subsiding, did she think of what her reason might have shown her at first—that 1t was an owl, angry at its precincts being invaded: or perhaps some large sea-bird. With her face white as death, and her limbs shaking as though in an ague fit, she made her way to the entrance gate again ; passed through it, and so got away from the Friars Keep. ECoOMmicloooks (CO)