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THE SILVER LADY.
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occurred in the family, that some obscure intimation of it did not for several previous days hover confusedly before her eyes; and, strange to say, all these visions invariably bore some dim, mysterious, and even to her, inscrutable reference to the chamber of the Silver Lady. Even my arrival had been known to her for some days before it occurred; an avowal which explained to me the bewitching emotion which she had exhibited when I first beheld her in the castle garden.

The discovery of this melancholy faculty, which, in my mind, was intimately, though mystically, connected with her somnambulism, only served to attach me still more powerfully to this interesting and lovely girl. How many secret sources of sympathy and union now existed between us! My first meeting with her had also been imaged to me; I, too, was of a temperament visionary and pensive: Heaven itself seemed to have arranged that our paths in life should be identical! Thus, it pleased me to fancy; and gladly did I cherish this fond and fervent belief in the unity of our destinies, and strive to regard it as a pledge of our future happiness.

I thought I now perceived in Adelaide a return of my affection; though the impression which the sad death of her brother had made on her, was yet too recent to allow me to speak, with any propriety, of an attachment which required so many explanations and confessions to obtain a favourable reception from the persons on whom its success depended.

The shock the old tower had received, appeared now a prophetic warning; and though with his son expired the superstitious belief in the good fortune which was to depend upon the preservation of the tower, yet the Baron fortified it as far as possible. Accustomed as I had now become, to watch with unceasing interest, and in the consciousness of her prescient faculties, with a certain degree of superstitious apprehension, all the moods of my beloved Adelaide’s mind, I found some-