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She looked round the room Thecurtains see but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly hueously behind each curtain, saw nothing on either lo seat to scare her, and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction of the wind's force A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from this examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for bed

"She should take her time; she should not hurry herself; she did not care if she were the last person up in the house But she would not make up her fire; that would seeht after she were in bed" The fire therefore died away, and Catherine, having spent the best part of an hour in her arrangeiving a parting glance round the rooh, old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though in a situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her notice before Henry's words, his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at first, ih there could be nothing really in it, there was so whimsical, it was certainly a very remarkable coincidence! She took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet

It was not absolutely ebony and gold; but it was japan, black and yellow japan of the handsomest kind; and as she held her candle, the yellow had very old The key was in the door, and she had a strange fancy to look into it; not, however, with the s, but it was so very odd, after what Henry had said In short, she could not sleep till she had exareat caution on a chair, she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turn it; but it resisted her uted, she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and she believed herself successful; but how strangely mysterious! The door was still immovable She paused a moment in breathless wonder

The wind roared down the chiainst the s, and everything seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation To retire to bed, however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep must be impossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her immediate vicinity