The Invisible Girl

This slender narrative has no pretensions to the regularity of a story,
or the development of situations and feelings; it is but a slight
sketch, delivered nearly as it was narrated to me by one of the humblest
of the actors concerned: nor will I spin out a circumstance interesting
principally from its singularity and truth, but narrate, as concisely as
I can, how I was surprised on visiting what seemed a ruined tower,
crowning a bleak promontory overhanging the sea, that flows between
Wales and Ireland, to find that though the exterior preserved all the
savage rudeness that betokened many a war with the elements, the
interior was fitted up somewhat in the guise of a summer-house, for it
was too small to deserve any other name. It consisted but of the
ground-floor, which served as an entrance, and one room above, which was
reached by a staircase made out of the thickness of the wall. This
chamber was floored and carpeted, decorated with elegant furniture; and,
above all, to attract the attention and excite curiosity, there hung
over the chimney-piece--for to preserve the apartment from damp a
fire-place had been built evidently since it had assumed a guise so
dissimilar to the object of its construction--a picture simply painted
in water-colours, which seemed more than any part of the adornments of
the room to be at war with the rudeness of the building, the solitude in
which it was placed, and the desolation of the surrounding scenery. This
drawing represented a lovely girl in the very pride and bloom of youth;
her dress was simple, in the fashion of the day--(remember, reader, I
write at the beginning of the eighteenth century), her countenance was
embellished by a look of mingled innocence and intelligence, to which
was added the imprint of serenity of soul and natural cheerfulness. She
was reading one of those folio romances which have so long been the
delight of the enthusiastic and young; her mandoline was at her
feet--her parroquet perched on a huge mirror near her; the arrangement
of furniture and hangings gave token of a luxurious dwelling, and her
attire also evidently that of home and privacy, yet bore with it an
appearance of ease and girlish ornament, as if she wished to please.
Beneath this picture was inscribed in golden letters, "The Invisible
Girl."

Rambling about a country nearly uninhabited, having lost my way, and
being overtaken by a shower, I had lighted on this dreary looking
tenement, which seemed to rock in the blast, and to be hung up there as
the very symbol of desolation. I was gazing wistfully and cursing
inwardly my stars which led me to a ruin that could afford no shelter,
though the storm began to pelt more seriously than before, when I saw an
old woman's head popped out from a kind of loophole, and as suddenly
withdrawn:--a minute after a feminine voice called to me from within,
and penetrating a little brambly maze that skreened a door, which I had
not before observed, so skilfully had the planter succeeded in
concealing art with nature I found the good dame standing on the
threshold and inviting me to take refuge within. "I had just come up
from our cot hard by," she said, "to look after the things, as I do
every day, when the rain came on--will ye walk up till it is over?" I
was about to observe that the cot hard by, at the venture of a few rain
drops, was better than a ruined tower, and to ask my kind hostess
whether "the things" were pigeons or crows that she was come to look
after, when the matting of the floor and the carpeting of the staircase
struck my eye. I was still more surprised when I saw the room above; and
beyond all, the picture and its singular inscription, naming her
invisible, whom the painter had coloured forth into very agreeable
visibility, awakened my most lively curiosity: the result of this, of
my exceeding politeness towards the old woman, and her own natural
garrulity, was a kind of garbled narrative which my imagination eked
out, and future inquiries rectified, till it assumed the following form.

Some years before in the afternoon of a September day, which, though
tolerably fair, gave many tokens of a tempestuous evening, a gentleman
arrived at a little coast town about ten miles from this place; he
expressed his desire to hire a boat to carry him to the town of about
fifteen miles further on the coast. The menaces which the sky held forth
made the fishermen loathe to venture, till at length two, one the father
of a numerous family, bribed by the bountiful reward the stranger
promised--the other, the son of my hostess, induced by youthful daring,
agreed to undertake the voyage.