"Well! to be sure, Madam, you were born to be a saint," said
Bianca, "and there is no resisting one's vocation: you will end in
a convent at last. But there is my Lady Isabella would not be so
reserved to me: she will let me talk to her of young men: and
when a handsome cavalier has come to the castle, she has owned to
me that she wished your brother Conrad resembled him."

"Bianca," said the Princess, "I do not allow you to mention my
friend disrespectfully. Isabella is of a cheerful disposition, but
her soul is pure as virtue itself. She knows your idle babbling
humour, and perhaps has now and then encouraged it, to divert
melancholy, and enliven the solitude in which my father keeps us--"

"Blessed Mary!" said Bianca, starting, "there it is again! Dear
Madam, do you hear nothing? this castle is certainly haunted!"

"Peace!" said Matilda, "and listen! I did think I heard a voice--
but it must be fancy: your terrors, I suppose, have infected me."

"Indeed! indeed! Madam," said Bianca, half-weeping with agony, "I
am sure I heard a voice."

"Does anybody lie in the chamber beneath?" said the Princess.

"Nobody has dared to lie there," answered Bianca, "since the great
astrologer, that was your brother's tutor, drowned himself. For
certain, Madam, his ghost and the young Prince's are now met in the
chamber below--for Heaven's sake let us fly to your mother's
apartment!"