"I can just remember my mother. She was always gentle and kind to Francis and me. We so seldom saw our father that we loved her with the most ardent affection. I recollect the fatal night of her departure as well as if it were but yesterday. The weather was July, and oppressively warm, and Mrs. Starling, the nurse, put us early to bed, that we might not disturb Lady Charlotte, who was dressing to go to a large party, she said, 'and could not play with us that night.'
"I was a nervous, irritable boy. I could not sleep for the heat, and lay awake watching the moon, and the strange shadows thrown by the vine-leaves that encircled the window, upon the white curtains of my bed. At last I grew frightened by the grotesque shapes, which my too active imagination endowed with life and motion, when the summer breeze from the open window stirred the drapery.
"I began to cry piteously.
"A figure glided into the room, and sat down beside me on the bed. It was my mother. She was dressed for a journey, and wore a dark cloth riding habit, and a broad black velvet hat and white feathers. She was a tall, elegant-looking woman, more remarkable, I have been told, for her exquisite form than for her face. She was, if anything, too fair, with dark blue eyes and flaxen hair like my own. She used to call me her dear, white-headed boy, and congratulate herself on my being a Granville—her maiden name—and not a Fitzmorris. That night she looked very pale and sad, and seen in the white moon-light, appeared more like a ghost than a creature of warm flesh and blood.
"'What ails my darling boy?' she said, and took me out of the bed into her lap, pressing me tightly to her breast, and kissing the tears from my wet cheeks.
"'I am afraid, mamma.' I trembled and looked timidly towards the curtains.
"'Afraid of what?' and her eyes followed mine with a startled expression.
"'Of those things dancing on the bed curtains. Don't you see the black, ugly creatures, mamma?'
"'They are only shadows; they cannot hurt you, Gerard.'