Hail, mildly-pleasing Solitude!
Companion of the wise and good-This is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born. But chief when evening scenes decay
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful, soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine.
THOMSON
Emily's injunctions to Annette to be silent on the subject of her terror
were ineffectual, and the occurrence of the preceding night spread such
alarm among the servants, who now all affirmed, that they had frequently
heard unaccountable noises in the chateau, that a report soon reached
the Count of the north side of the castle being haunted. He treated
this, at first, with ridicule, but, perceiving, that it was productive
of serious evil, in the confusion it occasioned among his household, he
forbade any person to repeat it, on pain of punishment.
The arrival of a party of his friends soon withdrew his thoughts
entirely from this subject, and his servants had now little leisure to
brood over it, except, indeed, in the evenings after supper, when they
all assembled in their hall, and related stories of ghosts, till they
feared to look round the room; started, if the echo of a closing door
murmured along the passage, and refused to go singly to any part of the
castle. On these occasions Annette made a distinguished figure. When she told
not only of all the wonders she had witnessed, but of all that she
had imagined, in the castle of Udolpho, with the story of the strange
disappearance of Signora Laurentini, she made no trifling impression on
the mind of her attentive auditors. Her suspicions, concerning Montoni,
she would also have freely disclosed, had not Ludovico, who was now in
the service of the Count, prudently checked her loquacity, whenever it
pointed to that subject.
Among the visitors at the chateau was the Baron de Saint Foix, an old
friend of the Count, and his son, the Chevalier St. Foix, a sensible
and amiable young man, who, having in the preceding year seen the Lady
Blanche, at Paris, had become her declared admirer. The friendship,
which the Count had long entertained for his father, and the equality
of their circumstances made him secretly approve of the connection; but,
thinking his daughter at this time too young to fix her choice for
life, and wishing to prove the sincerity and strength of the Chevalier's
attachment, he then rejected his suit, though without forbidding his
future hope. This young man now came, with the Baron, his father,
to claim the reward of a steady affection, a claim, which the Count
admitted and which Blanche did not reject.