Remorse, at times, I could
plainly read.
One thing I soon noticed; the room in which Captain Allen died--the
north-west chamber before mentioned--remained shut up; and an old
servant told me, years afterwards, that Mrs. Allen had never been
inside of it since the fatal day on which I attended him in his last
moments.
At the time when this story opens the old lady was verging on to
sixty. The five years which had passed since she was left alone had
bent her form considerably, and the diseased state of mind which I
noticed when first called in to visit the family as a physician, was
now but a little way removed from insanity. She was haunted by many
strange hallucinations; and the old servant above alluded to,
informed me, that she was required to sleep in the room with her
mistress, as she never would be alone after dark. Often, through the
night, she would start up in terror, her diseased imagination
building up terrible phantoms in the land of dreams, alarming the
house with her cries.
I rarely visited her that I did not see new evidences of waning
reason.
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