



Produced by Suzanne Shell, Michael Lockey, and Project
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HAUNTINGS

FANTASTIC STORIES

VERNON LEE

1890






To _FLORA PRIESTLEY_ and _ARTHUR LEMON_

_Are Dedicated_

DIONEA, AMOUR DURE,

_and_ THESE PAGES OF INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY.




_Preface_

We were talking last evening--as the blue moon-mist poured in through
the old-fashioned grated window, and mingled with our yellow
lamplight at table--we were talking of a certain castle whose
heir is initiated (as folk tell) on his twenty-first birthday to the
knowledge of a secret so terrible as to overshadow his subsequent life.
It struck us, discussing idly the various mysteries and terrors that
may lie behind this fact or this fable, that no doom or horror
conceivable and to be defined in words could ever adequately solve this
riddle; that no reality of dreadfulness could seem caught but paltry,
bearable, and easy to face in comparison with this vague we know not
what.

And this leads me to say, that it seems to me that the supernatural, in
order to call forth those sensations, terrible to our ancestors and
terrible but delicious to ourselves, skeptical posterity, must
necessarily, and with but a few exceptions, remain enwrapped in
mystery. Indeed, 'tis the mystery that touches us, the vague shroud of
moonbeams that hangs about the haunting lady, the glint on the
warrior's breastplate, the click of his unseen spurs, while the figure
itself wanders forth, scarcely outlined, scarcely separated from the
surrounding trees; or walks, and sucked back, ever and anon, into the
flickering shadows.

A number of ingenious persons