TWICE TOLD TALES

THE WHITE OLD MAID

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows, and showed a
spacious chamber, richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one
lattice, the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor;
the ghostly light, through the other, slept upon a bed, falling
between the heavy silken curtains, and illuminating the face of a
young man. But, how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features!
and how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes; it
was a corpse, in its burial-clothes.

Suddenly, the fixed features seemed to move, with dark emotion.
Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain, waving
betwixt the dead face and the moonlight, as the door of the chamber
opened, and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in
the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of
triumph, as she bent over the pale corpse-pale as itself--and pressed
her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from
that long kiss, her features writhed, as if a proud heart were
fighting with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the
corpse had moved responsive to her own. Still an illusion! The
silken curtain had waved, a second time, betwixt the dead face and the
moonlight, as another fair young girl unclosed the door, and glided,
ghost-like, to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both