to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe,
where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature
of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret
of the red-room -- the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of
its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed
his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the
undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration
had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me
riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed
rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe,
with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels;
to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between
them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not
quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move,
I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure.
Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinated
glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked
colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and
the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and
arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where
all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought
it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's
evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells
in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I
returned to my stool.