We
don't know how little is heritable, and how much simply training, until we
encounter some-such spectacle as that of my poor cousin Milly.
When I lay down in my bed and reviewed the day, it seemed like a month of
wonders. Uncle Silas was always before me; the voice so silvery for an old
man--so preternaturally soft; the manners so sweet, so gentle; the aspect,
smiling, suffering, spectral. It was no longer a shadow; I had now seen
him in the flesh. But, after all, was he more than a shadow to me? When I
closed my eyes I saw him before me still, in necromantic black, ashy with a
pallor on which I looked with fear and pain, a face so dazzlingly pale,
and those hollow, fiery, awful eyes! It sometimes seemed as if the curtain
opened, and I had seen a ghost.
I had seen him; but he was still an enigma and a marvel. The living face
did not expound the past, any more than the portrait portended the future.
He was still a mystery and a vision; and thinking of these things I fell
asleep.
Mary Quince, who slept in the dressing-room, the door of which was close
to my bed, and lay open to secure me against ghosts, called me up; and the
moment I knew where I was I jumped up, and peeped eagerly from the window.
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