The house was handsome and spacious, but the melancholy appearance of desertion. The benches were by the wall, but there were none to sit there; the tables were spread in what had been the hall, but it seemed as if none had gathered round them for many years;--the clock struck audibly, there was no voice of mirth or of occupation to drown its sound; time told his awful lesson to silence alone;--the hearths were black with fuel long since consumed;--the family portraits looked as if they were the only tenants of the mansion; they seemed to say, from their mouldering frames, “there are none to gaze on us;” and the echo of the steps of Stanton and his feeble guide, was the only sound audible between the peals of thunder that rolled still awfully, but more distantly,--every peal like the exhausted murmurs of a spent heart. As they passed on, a shriek was heard. Stanton paused, and fearful images of the dangers to which travellers on the Continent are exposed in deserted and remote habitations, came into his mind. “Don’t heed it,” said the old woman, lighting him on with a miserable lamp;--“it is only he. 

The old woman having now satisfied herself, by ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil, had neither horn, hoof, or tail, that he could bear the sign of the cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length commenced her story, which, weary and comfortless as Stanton was.

“Every obstacle was now removed; parents and relations at last gave up all opposition, and the young pair were united. Never was there a lovelier,--they seemed like angels who had only anticipated by a few years their celestial and eternal union. The marriage was solemnized with much pomp, and a few days after there was a feast in that very wainscotted chamber which you paused to remark was so gloomy. It was that night hung with rich tapestry, representing the exploits of the Cid, particularly that of his burning a few Moors who refused to renounce their accursed religion. They were represented beautifully tortured, writhing and howling, and “Mahomet! Mahomet!” issuing out of their mouths, as they called on him in their burning agonies;--you could almost hear them scream. At the upper end of the room, under a splendid estrade, over which was an image of the blessed Virgin, sat Donna Isabella de Cardoza, mother to the bride, and near her Donna Ines, the bride, on rich almohadas; the bridegroom sat opposite to her; and though they never spoke to each other, their eyes, slowly raised, but suddenly withdrawn, (those eyes that blushed), told to each other the delicious 

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