Ding, dong!

“A quarter to it.” Darcy suddenly remembered that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

Ding, dong!

“The hour itself,” said Darcy triumphantly, “and nothing else!”

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and a hand drew the curtains of his bed aside. Not the curtains at his feet nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. Darcy, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them.

It was a not a stranger’s figure. Her hair was white, as if with age, swept up with loose tendrils falling, curls framed the face that had not a wrinkle in it, and a tender bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and feminine, her hands the same. Her feet, most delicately formed, were encased in delicate white slippers. She wore a gown of the purest white and round its high waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. She held a branch of fresh green holly in her hand; and, in singular contradiction of this wintry emblem, had her dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about her was that from the crown of her head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible.

Darcy looked at it with increasing steadiness.

“Mama?” Darcy said somewhat indistinctly, for the face resembled that of Lady Anne Darcy. “Are you the Spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Darcy.