[January 22nd, [1879], continued ]
Another theme of the
same kind.
A young girl, unknown to herself, is followed, constantly, by a figure which
other persons see. She is prefectly unconscious of it – but there is a
dread that she may cease to be so. The figure is that of a young man –
and there is a theory that the day that she falls in love, she may suddenly
perceive it. Her mother dies, and the narrator of the story then discovers,
by finding an old miniature among her letters and papers, that the figure is
that of a young man whom she has jilted in her youth, and who therefore
committed suicide. The girl does fall in love, and sees the figure.
She accepts her lover, and never sees it again!
part of an etext edition of
Sir Edmund Orme
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website