Haunted Lives

An excerpt:THE Old Brompton of my earlier recollections, with its silent lanes, its grass-plots, and flower-knots, its towering trees, and those sober old houses of dusky red brick faced with white stone, which, set round with tall flower-pots and flowering shrubs and roses, had a character of old-world comfort, and even grace, has faded and broken up like a sunset city of cloud.When regretful memory names a place, as I name Old Brompton, I always find it call up a special picture, and always the same. Mine is no bigger than a cabinet picture. Through a short perspective, the rugged columns of half-a-dozen old trees, under shadow, with a patch of broken flickering light, I see little more than the lower half of the tall old drawing-room window -- dusky brick, and a worn setting of old Caen stone. On the broad window-stone stand some flower-pots; I know not the names of the flowers, trembling stars and cups of blue and crimson; and from the chiar'oscuro of the room within leans over them the prettiest face, I almost think, this mortal world ever saw.Beautiful cousin, Laura Challys Gray! A pretty music rings in your name, for me -- with those sad notes that come from the distant past, and die in the far future.I close my eyes, and I see you, your violet eyes, and rich brown tresses, with their golden folds, the delicate oval of your face, and your crimson lips. Oh! pretty Laura -- odd, wayward, misunderstood, full of faults -- with many perfections, I am sure, that others possessed not -- I am going to jot down my recollections of you, and what I know of a story as odd as your character.

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