General Browne was but little interested in the
details which these accounts conveyed to him. They were, indeed,
of the kind which are usually found in an old family gallery.
Here was a Cavalier who had ruined the estate in the royal cause;
there a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match
with a wealthy Roundhead. There hung a gallant who had been in
danger for corresponding with the exiled Court at Saint
Germain's; here one who had taken arms for William at the
Revolution; and there a third that had thrown his weight
alternately into the scale of Whig and Tory.
While lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest's
ear, "against the stomach of his sense," they gained the middle
of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start, and
assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear,
as his eyes were suddenly caught and riveted by a portrait of an
old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress of the end of the
seventeenth century.
"There she is!" he exclaimed--"there she is, in form and
features, though Inferior in demoniac expression to the accursed
hag who visited me last night!"
"If that be the case," said the young nobleman, "there can remain
no longer any doubt of the horrible reality of your apparition.
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