WITTY

Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was not likely to take much of a

fancy to anybody in the house. She was not exactly naughty or wilful: she

was far from disobedient; but an object less conducive to comfort— to tran-

quillity even— than she presented, it was scarcely possible to have before

one's eyes. She moped: no grown person could have performed that

uncheering business better; no furrowed face of adult exile, longing for Eu-

rope at Europe's antipodes, ever bore more legibly the signs of home sick-

ness than did her infant visage. She seemed growing old and unearthly. I,

Lucy Snowe, plead guiltless of that curse, an overheated and discursive

imagination; but whenever, opening a room-door, I found her seated in a

corner alone, her head in her pigmy hand, that room seemed to me not in-

habited, but haunted.

And again, when of moonlight nights, on waking, I beheld her figure,