'Pray, ma'amselle, stand beside the picture, that I may look at you
together,' said Dorothee, who, when the request was complied with,
exclaimed again at the resemblance. Emily also, as she gazed upon it,
thought that she had somewhere seen a person very like it, though she
could not now recollect who this was.
In this closet were many memorials of the departed Marchioness; a robe
and several articles of her dress were scattered upon the chairs, as if
they had just been thrown off. On the floor were a pair of black satin
slippers, and, on the dressing-table, a pair of gloves and a long black
veil, which, as Emily took it up to examine, she perceived was dropping
to pieces with age
. 'Ah!' said Dorothee, observing the veil, 'my lady's hand laid it there;
it has never been moved since!'
Emily, shuddering, immediately laid it down again. 'I well remember
seeing her take it off,' continued Dorothee, 'it was on the night before
her death, when she had returned from a little walk I had persuaded her
to take in the gardens, and she seemed refreshed by it. I told her how
much better she looked, and I remember what a languid smile she gave me;
but, alas! she little thought, or I either, that she was to die, that
night.' Dorothee wept again, and then, taking up the veil, threw it suddenly
over Emily, who shuddered to find it wrapped round her, descending even
to her feet, and, as she endeavoured to throw it off, Dorothee intreated
that she would keep it on for one moment. 'I thought,' added she, 'how
like you would look to my dear mistress in that veil;--may your life,
ma'amselle, be a happier one than hers!'
Emily, having disengaged herself from the veil, laid it again on the
dressing-table, and surveyed the closet, where every object, on which
her eye fixed, seemed to speak of the Marchioness. In a large oriel
window of painted glass, stood a table, with a silver crucifix, and a
prayer-book open; and Emily remembered with emotion what Dorothee had
mentioned concerning her custom of playing on her lute in this window,
before she observed the lute itself, lying on a corner of the table, as
if it had been carelessly placed there by the hand, that had so often
awakened it. 'This is a sad forlorn place!' said Dorothee, 'for, when my dear lady
died, I had no heart to put it to rights, or the chamber either; and my
lord never came into the rooms after, so they remain just as they did
when my lady was removed for interment.'