University of Virginia Library

NUMBER III.

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE.

Mine excellent friend, the landlord of the Province
House, was pleased, the other evening, to invite Mr.
Tiffany and myself to an oyster supper. This slight
mark of respect and gratitude, as he handsomely observed,
was far less than the ingenious tale-teller, and
I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had fairly
earned, by the public notice which our joint lucubrations
had attracted to his establishment. Many a segar
had been smoked within his premises — many a
glass of wine, or more potent aqua vitæ, had been
quaffed — many a dinner had been eaten by curious
strangers, who, save for the fortunate conjunction of
Mr. Tiffany and me, would never have ventured
through that darksome avenue, which gives access to
the historic precincts of the Province House. In
short, if any credit be due to the courteous assurances
of Mr. Thomas Waite, we had brought his forgotten
mansion almost as effectually into public view

as if we had thrown down the vulgar range of shoe-shops
and dry-good stores, which hides its aristocratic
front from Washington street. It may be unadvisable,
however, to speak too loudly of the increased
custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite should find it
difficult to renew the lease on so favorable terms as
heretofore.

Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr.
Tiffany nor myself felt any scruple in doing full justice
to the good things that were set before us. If
the feast were less magnificent than those same paneled
walls had witnessed, in a by-gone century — if
mine host presided with somewhat less of state, than
might have befitted a successor of the royal Governors
— if the guests made a less imposing show than
the bewigged, and powdered, and embroidered dignitaries,
who erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table,
and now sleep within their armorial tombs on Copp's
Hill, or round King's Chapel — yet never, I may
boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble
in the Province House, from Queen Anne's days
to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered more
interesting by the presence of a venerable personage,
whose own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch
of Gage and Howe, and even supplied him with a
doubtful anecdote or two of Hutchinson. He was
one of that small, and now all but extinguished class,
whose attachment to royalty, and to the colonial institutions
and customs that were connected with it,
had never yielded to the democratic heresies of aftertimes.
The young queen of Britain has not a more

loyal subject in her realm — perhaps not one who
would kneel before her throne with such reverential
love — as this old grandsire whose head has whitened
beneath the mild sway of the Republic, which still,
in his mellower moments, he terms a usurpation.
Yet prejudices so obstinate have not made him
an ungentle or impracticable companion. If the
truth must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has
been of such a scrambling and unsettled character
— he has had so little choice of friends, and been
so often destitute of any — that I doubt whether he
would refuse a cup of kindness with either Oliver
Cromwell or John Hancock; to say nothing of any
democrat now upon the stage. In another paper of
this series, I may perhaps give the reader a closer
glimpse of his portrait.

Our host, in due season, uncorked a bottle of Madeira,
of such exquisite perfume and admirable flavor,
that he surely must have discovered it in an ancient
bin, down deep beneath the deepest cellar, where
some jolly old butler stored away the Governor's
choicest wine, and forgot to reveal the secret on his
death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost, and a libation
to his memory! This precious liquor was imbibed
by Mr. Tiffany with peculiar zest; and after
sipping the third glass, it was his pleasure to give us
one of the oddest legends which he had yet raked
from the store-house, where he keeps such matters.
With some suitable adornments from my own fancy,
it ran pretty much as follows:

Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the government
of Massachusetts Bay, now nearly a hundred
and twenty years ago, a young lady of rank and
fortune arrived from England, to claim his protection
as her guardian. He was her distant relative, but the
nearest who had survived the gradual extinction of
her family; so that no more eligible shelter could be
found for the rich and high-born Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe, than within the Province House of a transatlantic
colony. The consort of Governor Shute,
moreover, had been as a mother to her childhood, and
was now anxious to receive her, in the hope that a
beautiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely
less peril from the primitive society of New England,
than amid the artifices and corruptions of a court.
If either the Governor or his lady had especially
consulted their own comfort, they would probably
have sought to devolve the responsibility on other
hands; since with some noble and splendid traits of
character, Lady Eleanore was remarkable for a harsh,
unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her hereditary
and personal advantages, which made her
almost incapable of control. Judging from many
traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar temper was hardly
less than a monomania; or, if the acts which it inspired
were those of a sane person, it seemed due
from Providence that pride so sinful should be followed
by as severe a retribution. That tinge of the
marvelous which is thrown over so many of these
half-forgotten legends has probably imparted an additional
wildness to the strange story of Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe.

The ship in which she came passenger had arrived
at Newport, whence Lady Eleanore was conveyed to
Boston in the Governor's coach, attended by a small
escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous
equipage, with its four black horses, attracted much
notice as it rumbled through Cornhill, surrounded by
the prancing steeds of half a dozen cavaliers, with
swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their
holsters. Through the large glass windows of the
coach, as it rolled along, the people could discern the
figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely combining an
almost queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty
of a maiden in her teens. A singular tale had gone
abroad among the ladies of the province, that their
fair rival was indebted for much of the irresistible
charm of her appearance to a certain article of dress
— an embroidered mantle — which had been wrought
by the most skilful artist in London, and possessed
even magical properties of adornment. On the present
occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery
of dress, being clad in a riding-habit of velvet,
which would have appeared stiff and ungraceful on
any other form.

The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and
the whole cavalcade came to a pause in front of the
contorted iron balustrade that fenced the Province
House from the public street. It was an awkward
coincidence, that the bell of the Old South was just
then tolling for a funeral; so that, instead of a gladsome
peal with which it was customary to announce
the arrival of distinguished strangers, Lady Eleanore

Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if
calamity had come embodied in her beautiful person.

`A very great disrespect!' exclaimed Captain Langford,
an English officer, who had recently brought
despatches to Governor Shute. `The funeral should
have been deferred, lest Lady Eleanore's spirits be
affected by such a dismal welcome.'

`With your pardon, sir,' replied Doctor Clarke, a
physician, and a famous champion of the popular
party, `whatever the heralds may pretend, a dead
beggar must have precedence of a living queen.
King Death confers high privileges.'

These remarks were interchanged while the speakers
waited a passage through the crowd, which had
gathered on each side of the gateway, leaving an
open avenue to the portal of the Province House.
A black slave in livery now leaped from behind the
coach, and threw open the door; while at the same
moment Governor Shute descended the flight of steps
from his mansion, to assist Lady Eleanore in alighting.
But the Governor's stately approach was anticipated
in a manner that excited general astonishment.
A pale young man, with his black hair all in disorder,
rushed from the throng, and prostrated himself
beside the coach, thus offering his person as a footstool
for Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe to tread upon.
She held back an instant; yet with an expression as
if doubting whether the young man were worthy to
bear the weight of her footstep, rather than dissatisfied
to receive such awful reverence from a fellow-mortal.

`Up, sir,' said the Governor, sternly, at the same
time lifting his cane over the intruder. `What means
the Bedlamite by this freak?'

`Nay,' answered Lady Eleanore playfully, but
with more scorn than pity in her tone, `your Excellency
shall not strike him. When men seek only to
be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a
favor so easily granted — and so well deserved!'

Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam on a cloud,
she placed her foot upon the cowering form, and extended
her hand to meet that of the Governor.
There was a brief interval, during which Lady Eleanore
retained this attitude; and never, surely, was
there an apter emblem of aristocracy and hereditary
pride, trampling on human sympathies and the kindred
of nature, than these two figures presented at
that moment. Yet the spectators were so smitten
with her beauty, and so essential did pride seem to
the existence of such a creature, that they gave a
simultaneous acclamation of applause.

`Who is this insolent young fellow?' inquired
Captain Langford, who still remained beside Doctor
Clarke. `If he be in his senses, his impertinence demands
the bastinado. If mad, Lady Eleanore should
be secured from further inconvenience, by his confinement.'

`His name is Jervase Helwyse,' answered the Doctor
— `a youth of no birth or fortune, or other advantages,
save the mind and soul that nature gave him;
and being secretary to our colonial agent in London,
it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore

Rochcliffe. He loved her — and her scorn has driven
him mad.'

`He was mad so to aspire,' observed the English
officer.

`It may be so,' said Doctor Clarke, frowning as he
spoke. `But I tell you, sir, I could well nigh doute
the justice of the Heaven above us, if no signal
humiliation overtake this lady, who now treads so
haughtily into yonder mansion. She seeks to place
herself above the sympathies of our common nature,
which envelopes all human souls. See, if that nature
do not assert its claim over her in some mode that
shall bring her level with the lowest!'

`Never!' cried Captain Langford, indignantly —
`neither in life nor when they lay her with her ancestors.'

Not many days afterwards the Governor gave:
ball in honor of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. The
principal gentry of the colony received invitations,
which were distributed to their residences, far and
near, by messengers on horseback, bearing missives
sealed with all the formality of official despatches.
In obedience to the summons, there was a general
gathering of rank, wealth, and beauty; and the wide
door of the Province House had seldom given admittance
to more numerous and honorable guests than
on the evening of Lady Eleanore's ball. Without
much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might
even be termed splendid; for, according to the fashion
of the times, the ladies shone in rich silks and
satins, outspread over wide-projecting hoops; and the

gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery, laid unsparingly
upon the purple, or scarlet, or sky-blue velvet,
which was the material of their coats and waistcoats.
The latter article of dress was of great importance,
since it enveloped the wearer's body nearly to the
knees, and was perhaps bedizened with the amount
of his whole year's income, in golden flowers and
foliage. The altered taste of the present day — a
taste symbolic of a deep change in the whole system
of society — would look upon almost any of those
gorgeous figures as ridiculous; although that evening
the guests sought their reflections in the pier-glasses,
and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the glittering
crowd. What a pity that one of the stately
mirrors has not preserved a picture of the scene,
which, by the very traits that were so transitory,
might have taught us much that would be worth
knowing and remembering!

Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could
convey to us some faint idea of a garment, already
noticed in this legend — the Lady Eleanore's embroidered
mantle — which the gossips whispered was invested
with magic properties, so as to lend a new and
untried grace to her figure each time that she put it
on! Idle fancy as it is, this mysterious mantle has
thrown an awe around my image of her, partly from
its fabled virtues, and partly because it was the handiwork
of a dying woman, and, perchance, owed the
fantastic grace of its conception to the delirium of approaching
death.

After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady

Eleanore Rochcliffe stood apart from the mob of guests,
insulating herself within a small and distinguished
circle, to whom she accorded a more cordial favor
than to the general throng. The waxen torches threw
their radiance vividly over the scene, bringing out its
brilliant points in strong relief; but she gazed carelessly,
and with now and then an expression of weariness
or scorn, tempered with such feminine grace,
that her auditors scarcely perceived the moral deformity
of which it was the utterance. She beheld the
spectacle not with vulgar ridicule, as disdaining to be
pleased with the provincial mockery of a court festival,
but with the deeper scorn of one whose spirit held
itself too high to participate in the enjoyment of other
human souls. Whether or no the recollections of
those who saw her that evening were influenced by
the strange events with which she was subsequently
connected, so it was, that her figure ever after recurred
to them as marked by something wild and unnatural;
although, at the time, the general whisper
was of her exceeding beauty, and of the indescribable
charm which her mantle threw around her. Some
close observers, indeed, detected a feverish flush and
alternate paleness of countenance, with a corresponding
flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or twice
a painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude, as if she
were on the point of sinking to the ground. Then,
with a nervous shudder, she seemed to arouse her
energies, and threw some bright and playful, yet half-wicked
sarcasm into the conversation. There was so
strange a characteristic in her manners and sentiments,
that it astonished every right-minded listener;
till looking in her face, a lurking and incomprehensible
glance and smile perplexed them with doubts both as
to her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady
Eleanore Rochcliffe's circle grew smaller, till only
four gentlemen remained in it. These were Captain
Langford, the English officer before mentioned; a
Virginian planter, who had come to Massachusetts on
some political errand; a young Episcopal clergyman,
the grandson of a British Earl; and lastly, the private
secretary of Governor Shute, whose obsequiousness
had won a sort of tolerance from Lady Eleanore.

At different periods of the evening the liveried
servants of the Province House passed among the
guests, bearing huge trays of refreshments, and
French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe,
who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with
a bubble of Champaigne, had sunk back into a large
damask chair, apparently overwearied either with the
excitement of the scene or its tedium; and while, for
an instant, she was unconscious of voices, laughter,
and music, a young man stole forward, and knelt
down at her feet. He bore a salver in his hand, on
which was a chased silver goblet, filled to the brim
with wine, which he offered as reverentially as to a
crowned queen, or rather with the awful devotion of
a priest doing sacrifice to his idol. Conscious that
some one touched her robe, Lady Eleanore started,
and unclosed her eyes upon the pale, wild features
and disheveled hair of Jervase Helwyse.

`Why do you haunt me thus?' said she, in a languid

tone, but with a kindlier feeling than she ordinarily
permitted herself to express. `They tell me that
I have done you harm.'

`Heaven knows if that be so,' replied the young
man solemnly. `But, Lady Eleanore, in requital of
that harm, if such there be, and for your own earthly
and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of
this holy wine, and then to pass the goblet round
among the guests. And this shall be a symbol that
you have not sought to withdraw yourself from the
chain of human sympathies — which whoso would
shake off must keep company with fallen angels.'

`Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental
vessel?' exclaimed the Episcopal clergyman.

This question drew the notice of the guests to the
silver cup, which was recognised as appertaining to
the communion plate of the Old South Church; and,
for aught that could be known, it was brimming over
with the consecrated wine.

`Perhaps it is poisoned,' half whispered the Governor's
secretary.

`Pour it down the villain's throat!' cried the Virginian,
fiercely.

`Turn him out of the house!' cried Captain Langford,
seizing Jervase Helwyse so roughly by the
shoulder that the sacramental cup was overturned,
and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore's mantle.
`Whether knave, fool, or Bedlamite, it is intolerable
that the fellow should go at large.'

`Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm,' said
Lady Eleanore, with a faint and weary smile. `Take

him out of my sight, if such be your pleasure; for I
can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at
him — whereas, in all decency and conscience, it
would become me to weep for the mischief I have
wrought!'

But while the bystanders were attempting to lead
away the unfortunate young man, he broke from
them, and with a wild, impassioned earnestness,
offered a new and equally strange petition to Lady
Eleanore. It was no other than that she should
throw off the mantle, which, while he pressed the
silver cup of wine upon her, she had drawn more
closely around her form, so almost to shroud herself
within it.

`Cast it from you!' exclaimed Jervase Helwyse,
clasping his hands in an agony of entreaty. `It may
not yet be too late! Give the accursed garment to
the flames!'

But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew
the rich folds of the embroidered mantle over her
head, in such a fashion as to give a completely new
aspect to her beautiful face, which — half-hidden,
half-revealed — seemed to belong to some being of
mysterious character and purposes.

`Farewell, Jervase Helwyse!' said she. `Keep
my image in your remembrance, as you behold it
now.'

`Alas, lady!' he replied, in a tone no longer wild,
but sad as a funeral bell. `We must meet shortly,
when your face may wear another aspect — and that
shall be the image that must abide within me.'

He made no more resistance to the violent efforts
of the gentlemen and servants, who almost dragged
him out of the apartment, and dismissed him roughly
from the iron gate of the Province House. Captain
Langford, who had been very active in this affair,
was returning to the presence of Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe, when he encountered the physician, Doctor
Clarke, with whom he had held some casual talk
on the day of her arrival. The Doctor stood apart,
separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the
room, but eyeing her with such keen sagacity, that
Captain Langford involuntarily gave him credit for
the discovery of some deep secret.

`You appear to be smitten, after all, with the
charms of this queenly maiden,' said he, hoping thus
to draw forth the physician's hidden knowledge.

`God forbid!' answered Doctor Clarke, with a
grave smile; `and if you be wise you will put up the
same prayer for yourself. Wo to those who shall be
smitten by this beautiful Lady Eleanore! But yonder
stands the Governor — and I have a word or two
for his private ear. Good night!'

He accordingly advanced to Governor Shute, and
addressed him in so low a tone that none of the bystanders
could catch a word of what he said; although
the sudden change of his Excellency's hitherto cheerful
visage betokened that the communication could be
of no agreeable import. A very few moments afterwards,
it was announced to the guests that an unforeseen
circumstance rendered it necessary to put a
premature close to the festival.

The ball at the Province House supplied a topic of
conversation for the colonial metropolis, for some
days after its occurrence, and might still longer have
been the general theme, only that a subject of all engrossing
interest thrust it, for a time, from the public
recollection. This was the appearance of a dreadful
epidemic, which, in that age, and long before and
afterwards, was wont to slay its hundreds and thousands,
on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion
of which we speak, it was distinguished by a
peculiar virulence, insomuch that it has left its traces
— its pitmarks, to use an appropriate figure — on the
history of the country, the affairs of which were
thrown into confusion by its ravages. At first, unlike
its ordinary course, the disease seemed to confine
itself to the higher circles of society, selecting its
victims from among the proud, the well-born and the
wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers,
and lying down with the slumberers in silken beds.
Some of the most distinguished guests of the Province
House — even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her
favor — were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was
noticed, with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling,
that the four gentlemen — the Virginian, the British
officer, the young clergyman, and the Governor's
secretary — who had been her most devoted attendants
on the evening of the ball, were the foremost on
whom the plague-stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing
its onward progress, soon ceased to be exclusively
a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no

longer conferred like a noble's star, or an order of
knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow
and crooked streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome
dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the
artisans and laboring classes of the town. It compelled
rich and poor to feel themselves brethren,
then; and stalking to and fro across the Three Hills,
with a fierceness which made it almost a new pestilence,
there was that mighty conqueror — that scourge
and horror of our forefathers — the Small Pox!

We cannot estimate the affright which this plague
inspired of yore, by contemplating it as the fangless
monster of the present day. We must remember,
rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps
of the Asiatic cholera, striding from shore to
shore of the Atlantic, and marching like destiny upon
cities far remote, which flight had already half depopulated.
There is no other fear so horrible and
unhumanizing, as that which makes man dread to
breathe Heaven's vital air, lest it be poison, or to
grasp the hand of a brother or friend, lest the gripe
of the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the
dismay that now followed in the track of the disease,
or ran before it throughout the town. Graves were
hastily dug, and the pestilential relics, as hastily covered,
because the dead were enemies of the living,
and strove to draw them headlong, as it were, into
their own dismal pit. The public councils were suspended,
as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices,
now that an unearthly usurper had found his
way into the ruler's mansion. Had an enemy's fleet

been hovering on the coast, or his armies trampling
on our soil, the people would probably have committed
their defence to that same direful conqueror, who
had wrought their own calamity, and would permit
no interference with his sway. This conqueror had
a symbol of his triumphs. It was a blood-red flag,
that fluttered in the tainted air, over the door of every
dwelling into which the Small Pox had entered.

Such a banner was long since waving over the
portal of the Province House; for thence, as was
proved by tracking its footsteps back, had all this dreadful
mischief issued. It had been traced back to a lady's
luxurious chamber — to the proudest of the proud —
to her that was so delicate, and hardly owned herself
of earthly mould — to the haughty one, who took her
stand above human sympathies — to Lady Eleanore!
There remained no room for doubt, that the contagion
had lurked in that gorgeous mantle, which threw so
strange a grace around her at the festival. Its fantastic
splendor had been conceived in the delirious
brain of a woman on her death-bed, and was the last
toil of her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven
fate and misery with its golden threads. This dark
tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far and wide.
The people raved against the Lady Eleanore, and
cried out that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend,
and that, between them both, this monstrous evil had
been born. At times, their rage and despair took the
semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red
flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another, and
yet another door, they clapt their hands and shouted

through the streets, in bitter mockery: `Behold a
new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!'

One day in the midst of these dismal times, a wild
figure approached the portal of the Province House,
and folding his arms, stood contemplating the scarlet
banner, which a passing breeze shook fitfully, as if to
fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At length,
climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade,
he took down the flag, and entered the mansion,
waving it above his head. At the foot of the
staircase he met the Governor, booted and spurred,
with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the
point of setting forth upon a journey.

`Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?' exclaimed
Shute, extending his cane to guard himself
from contact. `There is nothing here but Death.
Back — or you will meet him!'

`Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the
pestilence!' cried Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red
flag aloft. `Death, and the Pestilence, who wears
the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through
the streets to-night, and I must march before them
with this banner!'

`Why do I waste words on the fellow?' muttered
the Governor, drawing his cloak across his mouth.
`What matters his miserable life, when none of us
are sure of twelve hours' breath? On, fool, to your
own destruction!'

He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately
ascended the staircase, but, on the first landing-place,
was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand upon

his shoulder. Looking fiercely up, with a madman's
impulse to struggle with, and rend asunder his opponent,
he found himself powerless beneath a calm,
stern eye, which possessed the mysterious property
of quelling frenzy at its height. The person whom
he had now encountered was the physician, Doctor
Clarke, the duties of whose sad profession had led
him to the Province House, where he was an infrequent
guest in more prosperous times.

`Young man, what is your purpose?' demanded
he.

`I seek the Lady Eleanore,' answered Jervase
Helwyse, submissively.

`All have fled from her,' said the physician. `Why
do you seek her now? I tell you, youth, her nurse
fell death-stricken on the threshold of that fatal chamber.
Know ye not, that never came such a curse to
our shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore? — that her
breath has filled the air with poison? — that she has
shaken pestilence and death upon the land, from the
folds of her accursed mantle?'

`Let me look upon her!' rejoined the mad youth,
more wildly. `Let me behold her, in her awful
beauty, clad in the regal garments of the pestilence!
She and Death sit on a throne together. Let me
kneel down before them!'

`Poor youth!' said Doctor Clarke; and, moved
by a deep sense of human weakness, a smile of
caustic humor curled his lip even then. `Wilt thou
still worship the destroyer, and surround her image
with fantasies the more magnificent, the more evil

she has wrought? Thus man doth ever to his tyrants!
Approach, then! Madness, as I have noted, has that
good efficacy, that it will guard you from contagion
— and perchance its own cure may be found in yonder
chamber.'

Ascending another flight of stairs, he threw open
a door, and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he should
enter. The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had
cherished a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in
state, unharmed herself by the pestilential influence,
which, as by enchantment, she scattered round about
her. He dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was
not dimmed, but brightened into superhuman splendor.
With such anticipations, he stole reverentially
to the door at which the physician stood, but paused
upon the threshold, gazing fearfully into the gloom
of the darkened chamber.

`Where is the Lady Eleanore?' whispered he.

`Call her,' replied the physician.

`Lady Eleanore! — Princess! — Queen of Death!'
cried Jervase Helwyse, advancing three steps into the
chamber. `She is not here! There, on yonder table,
I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she
wore upon her bosom. There' — and he shuddered
— `there hangs her mantle, on which a dead woman
embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where
is the Lady Eleanore!'

Something stirred within the silken curtains of a
canopied bed; and a low moan was uttered, which,
listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began to distinguish
as a woman's voice, complaining dolefully of

thirst. He fancied, even, that he recognised its
tones.

`My throat! — my throat is scorched,' murmured
the voice. `A drop of water!'

`What thing art thou?' said the brain-stricken
youth, drawing near the bed and tearing asunder its
curtains. `Whose voice hast thou stolen for thy murmurs
and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore
could be conscious of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap
of diseased mortality, why lurkest thou in my lady's
chamber?'

`Oh, Jervase Helwyse,' said the voice — and as it
spoke, the figure contorted itself, struggling to hide its
blasted face — `look not now on the woman you once
loved! The curse of Heaven hath stricken me, because
I would not call man my brother, nor woman
sister. I wrapt myself in PRIDE as in a MANTLE, and
scorned the sympathies of nature; and therefore has
nature made this wretched body the medium of a
dreadful sympathy. You are avenged — they are
all avenged — Nature is avenged — for I am Eleanore
Rochcliffe!'

The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness
lurking at the bottom of his heart, mad as he was, for
a blighted and ruined life, and love that had been
paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jervase
Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched
girl, and the chamber echoed, the curtains of the bed
were shaken, with his outburst of insane merriment.

`Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!' he

cried. `All have been her victims! Who so worthy
to be the final victim as herself?'

Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intellect,
he snatched the fatal mantle, and rushed from
the chamber and the house. That night, a procession
passed, by torch light, through the streets, bearing
in the midst, the figure of a woman, enveloped
with a richly embroidered mantle; while in advance
stalked Jervase Helwyse, waving the red flag of the
pestilence. Arriving opposite the Province House,
the mob burned the effigy, and a strong wind came
and swept away the ashes. It was said, that, from
that very hour, the pestilence abated, as if its sway
had some mysterious connection, from the first
plague-stroke to the last, with Lady Eleanore's Mantle.
A remarkable uncertainty broods over that unhappy
lady's fate. There is a belief, however, that,
in a certain chamber of this mansion, a female form
may sometimes be duskily discerned, shrinking into
the darkest corner, and muffling her face within an
embroidered mantle. Supposing the legend true, can
this be other than the once proud Lady Eleanore?

Mine host, and the old loyalist, and I, bestowed no
little warmth of applause upon this narrative, in
which we had all been deeply interested; for the
reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the
effect of such a tale is heightened, when, as in the
present case, we may repose perfect confidence in

the veracity of him who tells it. For my own part,
knowing how scrupulous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the
foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him
one whit the more faithfully, had he professed himself
an eye-witness of the doings and sufferings of
poor Lady Eleanore. Some skeptics, it is true,
might demand documentary evidence, or even require
him to produce the embroidered mantle, forgetting that
— Heaven be praised — it was consumed to ashes.
But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed
by the good cheer, began to talk, in his turn, about
the traditions of the Province House, and hinted that
he, if it were agreeable, might add a few reminiscences
to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having
no cause to dread a rival, immediately besought him
to favor us with a specimen; my own entreaties, of
course, were urged to the same effect; and our venerable
guest, well pleased to find willing auditors,
awaited only the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who
had been summoned forth to provide accommodations
for several new arrivals. Perchance the public —
but be this as its own caprice and ours shall settle the
matter — may read the result in another Tale of the
Province House.