A YOUNGER female branch of the house of York was destined, at the early age of fourteen, to be the wife of the old Count de Hainault. Her temper was volatile, gay and cheerful; that of the old count, her husbands, dark, morose, suspicious, and revengeful. The attentions his blooming bride received at the court of France, filled him with rage; and he resolved to remove his / wife from a place he thought so replete with danger.

He caused a tower to be built on a mountain, in a solitary part of Normandy, to which he carried the lovely countess, with no other companions than himself and an old maid servant. It was in the dreary season of winter, and the isolated tower, seen at a great distance by the superstitious villagers, was imagined to have been constructed by and to be the haunt of malignant spirits. No one dared to venture near it; and here the beauteous Countess of Hainault, formed to adorn a court, languished out a long and tedious winter, with a tyrant husband, whose love resembled that of Herod for Mariamne; franticly passionate, but selfish in the extreme.

Old Agatha, the servant, went constantly / to market, where she was speedily served with what she wanted, being looked upon as a witch. The countess had her music with her, and she would laugh and sing with all the cheerful innocence of infantine gaiety: yet sometimes a void in her heart appeared to want filling up. She would sigh frequently, not unheard by the count, who would, with a terrific voice and frown, interrogate her, who she sighed for! She might, with truth the most sacred, answer, for no one; her heart was untouched, and a kitten or a squirrel would afford her hours of diversion and a partial kind of happiness, by their sportive frolics.