Chapter 30 - Page 2

object; and she could not but reflect how little
these were to be compared with the devoted attachment of a high-souled
youth, whom the least glance of her eye could command, as the
high-mettled steed is governed by the bridle of the rider. It was when
plunged among these desolating reflections, that Mary Avenel felt the
void of mind, arising from the narrow and bigoted ignorance in which
Rome then educated the children of her church. Their whole religion
was a ritual, and their prayers were the formal iteration of unknown
words, which, in the hour of affliction, could yield but little
consolation to those who from habit resorted to them. Unused to the
practice of mental devotion, and of personal approach to the Divine
Presence by prayer, she could not help exclaiming in her distress,
"There is no aid for me on earth, and I know not how to ask it from
Heaven!"

As she spoke thus in an agony of sorrow, she cast her eyes into the
apartment, and saw the mysterious Spirit, which waited upon the
fortunes of her house, standing in the moonlight in the midst of the
room. The same form, as the reader knows, had more than once offered
itself to her sight; and either her native boldness of mind, or some
peculiarity attached to her from her birth, made her now look upon it
without shrinking. But the White Lady of Avenel was now more
distinctly visible, and more closely present, than she had ever before
seemed to be, and Mary was appalled by her presence. She would,
however, have spoken; but there ran a tradition, that though others
who had seen the White Lady had asked questions and received answers,
yet those of the house of Avenel who had ventured to speak to her, had
never long survived the colloquy. The figure, besides, as sitting up
in her bed, Mary Avenel gazed on it intently, seemed by its gestures
to caution her to keep silence, and at the same time to bespeak
attention.

The White Lady then seemed to press one of the planks of the floor
with her foot, while, in her usual low, melancholy, and musical chant,
she repeated the following verses:

"Maiden, whose sorrows wail the Living Dead,
Whose eyes shall commune with the Dead Alive,
Maiden, attend! Beneath my foot lies hid
The Word, the Law, the Path, which thou dost strive
To find and canst not find.--Could spirits shed
Tears for their lot, it were my lot to weep,
Showing the road which I shall never tread,
Though my foot points it.--Sleep, eternal sleep,
Dark, long, and cold forgetfulness my lot!--
But do not thou at human ills repine,
Secure there lies full guerdon in this spot
For all the woes that wait frail Adam's line--
Stoop, then, and make it yours--I may not make it mine!"

The phantom