Such, Biddy, was the manuscript that I scribbled last night, after the mysterious event which it relates. You shall now hear the particulars of all that has occurred to me since.
After the ruffians had departed, and I had rallied my spirits, I took up the lamp, and began examining the chamber. It was spacious, and the feeble light that I carried could but just penetrate it. Part of the walls were hidden with historical arras, worked in colourless and rotten worsted, which depicted scenes from the Provençal Romances; the deeds of Charlemagne and his twelve peers; the Crusaders, Troubadours, and Saracens; and the Necromantic feats of the Magician Jurl. The walls were wainscotted with black larchwood; and over the painted and escutcheoned windows hung iron visors, tattered pennons, and broken shields. An antique bed of decayed damask, with a lofty tester, stood in a corner; and a few grand moth-eaten chairs, tissued and fringed with threads of tarnished gold, were round the room. At the farther end, a picture of a soldier on horseback, darting his spear upon a man, who held up his hands in a supplicating attitude, was enclosed in a frame of uncommon size, that reached down to the ground. An old harp, which occupied one corner, proved imprisonment, and some clots of blood upon the floor proved murder.
I gazed with delight at this admirable apartment. It was a perfect treasure: nothing could be more complete: all was in the best style of horror; and now, for the first time, I felt the full consciousness of being as real a heroine as ever existed.
I then indulged myself with imagining the frightful scenes I should undergo here. Such attempts to murder me, such ghosts, such mysteries! figures flitting in the dusty perspective, quick steps along the corridor, groans, and an ill-minded lord of the castle.
In the midst of this pleasing reverie, methought I heard a step approaching. It stopped at the door, the bolts were undrawn, and an antiquated waiting-woman, in fardingale, ruffles, flounces, and flowered silk, bustled into the room.
'My lord,' said she, 'desires me to let your ladyship know that he will do himself the honour of waiting on you in half-an-hour.'
'Tell your lord,' said I, 'that I shall be ready to receive him: but pray, my good woman,' said I, 'what is the name of your lord?'
'Good woman!' cried she, bridling up; 'no more good woman than yourself: Dame Ursulina, if you please.'
'Well then, Dame Ursulina, what is his name?'
'The Baron Hildebrand,' answered she. 'The only feudal chieftain left in England.'