“I see in you, Nelly,” she continued dreamily, “an aged woman: you have grey hair and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crags, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. That’s what you’ll come to fifty years hence: I know you are not so now. I’m not wandering: you’re mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and I should think I was under Penistone Crags; and I’m conscious it’s night, and there are two candles on the table making the black press shine like jet.”
“The black press? where is that?” I asked. “You are talking in your sleep!”
“It’s against the wall, as it always is,” she replied. “It does appear odd—I see a face in it!”
“There’s no press in the room, and never was,” said I, resuming my seat, and looping up the curtain that I might watch her.
“Don’t you see that face?” she inquired, gazing earnestly at the mirror.
And say what I could, I was incapable of making her comprehend it to be her own; so I rose and covered it with a shawl.
“It’s behind there still!” she pursued, anxiously. “And it stirred. Who is it? I hope it will not come out when you are gone! Oh! Nelly, the room is haunted! I’m afraid of being alone!”
I took her hand in mine, and bid her be composed; for a succession of shudders convulsed her frame, and she would keep straining her gaze towards the glass.
“There’s nobody here!” I insisted. “It was yourself, Mrs. Linton: you knew it a while since.”
“Myself!” she gasped, “and the clock is striking twelve! It’s true, then! that’s dreadful!”