The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

60 THE HAUNTED GRANGE,
and her intense attachment to her benefactor and his
family, rendered her inexpressibly dear to them all. The
old tumble-down mansion of Rookwood Grange had long
enjoyed the reputation of being haunted; but since the
admission of Hannah within its crazy walls, fresh and tangible
sources of superstitiouo speculation had every where
presented themselves. Mysterious voices, whisperings
which seemed to proceed from the viewless air, unaccountable
lights, and even in the dim gloaming of twilight
a shadowy form, as of a woman with dripping garments
and streaming hair, had been identified with the old house
for some years; and wild stories were in circulation respecting
the origin of these mysteries, which the family
disregarded, but which the villagers placed such implicit
belief in, that Rookwood Grange came at last -to be regarded
as an infected ship in the midst of a fieet, who
were all uncertain of the actual reality and nature of an
evil which they more than suspected, and shrank from
with terror.
Within the haunted mansion doubts and misgivings prevailed
no less keenly than in the circle of village gossips.
Sights and sounds, alike unaccountable and alarming,
seemed so pertinaciously to attach themselves to the presence
of thc hapless Hannah, that nothing but the warm
affection which subsisted between the Rookwoods and
herself could have so long maintained their tender intcrcourse.
The poor girl would at times amuse them with
impromptu tales of other lands, glowing with beauty and
delight, which made their pulses beat and their nerves
shiver in response to her wild strain of inspiration. Sometimes
she would break out into a rhapsody of delicious poetry,
and anon sing airs of new and unimaginable beauty,
in tones whose melting tenderness thrilled every heart.