"I remember nothing that happened before I was nine years old," she
said.

He bent down suddenly and looked into her face. "Weir, what do you
mean? There is always an uncomfortable suggestion of mystery whenever
one speaks of your mother or your childhood. What is the reason you
cannot remember? Did you have brain fever, and when you recovered,
find your mind a blank? Such things have happened."

"No," she said, desperately, as if she had nerved herself for an
effort. "That was not it. I have often wanted to tell you, but I
cannot bear to speak of it. The old horror always comes back when
I think of it. But I feel that I ought to tell you before we are
married, and I will do so now since we are speaking of it. I did not
have brain fever, but when I was nine years old--I died."

"You what?"

"Yes, it is true. They called it catalepsy, a trance; but it was not;
I was really dead. I was thrown from a horse a few months after my
mother's death, and killed instantly. They laid me in the family
vault, but my father had ice put about me and would not have me
covered, and went every hour to see me, as he told me afterward. I
remember nothing; and they say that when people are in a trance they
are conscious of everything that passes around them. I knew nothing
until one night I suddenly opened my eyes and looked about me. It was
just such a night as this, only in mid-winter; the wind was howling
and shrieking, and the terrible gusts shook the vault in which I lay.
The ocean roared like thunder, and I could hear it hurl itself in its
fury against the rocks at the foot of the castle. A lamp was burning