Sometimes fancies wild and horrible assaulted her; she then
shut herself for days in her own chamber, and was heard as though in
converse with invisible things. When freed from this hallucination,
agony was marked on her brow, and her cheek was more than usually pale
and collapsed. She would then wander forth again:--the mountain-breeze
reanimated her spirits, and imagination again became pleasant unto her.
She heard the wild swans winging their way above her, and she thought of
the wild hunters and the spectre-horseman:[41] the short wail of the
curlew, the call of the moor-cock and plover, was the voice of her
beloved. To her all nature wore a charmed life: earth and sky were but
creatures formed for her use, and the ministers of her pleasure.
The Tower of Bernshaw was a small fortified house in the pass over the
hills from Burnley to Todmorden. It stood within a short distance from
the Eagle Crag; and the Lady Sibyl would often climb to the utmost verge
of that overhanging peak, looking from its dizzy height until her soul
expanded, and her thoughts took their flight through those dim regions
where the eye could not penetrate.
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