"'I mean it,' she said, with deep and sudden seriousness, 'it is no fancy. You will be here when the new moon shines?'"
"I promised, and after a while we parted.
"I had been with my kinsfolk at Bath nearly a month. I was to go home on the next day, when, turning over a case in the parlour, I came upon that miniature. I could not speak for a minute. At last I said, with dry tongue, and heart beating to the tune of heaven and hell—
"'Who is this?'
"'That?' said my aunt. 'Oh! she was betrothed to one of our family many years ago, but she died before the wedding. They say she was a bit of a witch. A handsome one, wasn't she?'
"I looked again at the face, the lips, the eyes of my dear and lovely love, whom I was to meet to-morrow night when the new moon shone on that tomb in our churchyard.
"'Did you say she was dead?' I asked, and I hardly knew my own voice.
"'Years and years ago! Her name's on the back and her date——'
"I took the portrait from its faded red-velvet bed, and read on the back—'Susannah Kingsnorth, Ob. 1713.'
"That was in 1813." My uncle stopped short.