At length she raised her eyes and looked around, and beheld a prospect magnificent beyond all words to portray. Spread out before her was the beautiful valley, with the river flowing in the midst, and the undulating, wooded hills rising beyond, all now royally arrayed in the gorgeous hues of autumn, and refulgently lighted up by the glorious rays of the setting sun. Ah! how brief are the moments of such splendid effects! Even as Em. gazed the sun sank down behind the mountains at her back, and all the valley faded into twilight. Em. turned away and walked around the side of the house and passed to the rear. There the precipice presented a different aspect. Instead of descending to the river it ascended to the clouds, and from a fissure in the rock, to the left of the stables, sprang a fountain that grew in volume as it fell from rock to rock, and rushed roaring into the river below. Em. knew—because she had heard, in the conversation between Ronald Bruce and her father on that evening when the former had stayed all night in the old manor-house—that the cultivated farms belonging to The Breezes estate were all in the valley below, and that these mountain ranges were only valuable for their quarries of blue limestone; but she wondered exceedingly at the eccentricity of the first proprietor, who had built his dwelling-house on this mere shelf of rock half way up the mountain side, with an ascending precipice behind it, and a descending precipice before it. She remained out until the twilight faded into darkness, and then she went into the house and ran up to her attic chamber, where the care of the little colored girl Liza had already lighted two wax candles and set them on the toilet-table, and had mended the wood fire which burned brightly on the hearth. Em. brushed her hair and ran a narrow blue ribbon through its brown ringlets, then put a blue bow to the meeting of her linen collar; and so, having made the best toilet she could for dinner with well-dressed ladies she put out her candles and left the room to go downstairs. The upper halls were dimly lighted, each by a little lamp at the back end. Em. had just reached the landing on the second story and was hurrying down the hall when a door on the left opened and a tall, dark, handsome woman, richly dressed, but looking older than either Mrs. Bruce or Mrs. Templeton, came out and carelessly approached Em. They stood face to face. The lady lifted her eyes haughtily to those of the girl that for the moment stood in her way. But when their gaze met the lady’s great black eyes dilated wide with terror, with horror! Her face blanched to the pallor of death, her frame shook as with an ague. “BEGONE!” she shrieked. “Why do you come to haunt me?” And with these words she fell to the floor. Em., paralyzed by amazement, stood speechless and motionless over the woman whom she had so involuntarily appalled and overwhelmed.