Jim’s Reviews > A Bottomless Grave & Other Victorian Tales of Terror > Status Update

She came outside the cab, dressed in an old barathea gown, a black cloak and bonnet, and an imperviously close gauze veil of the same sombre hue, which she held about her face as if that were a secret enemy everyone was curious to detect, and she terribly interested to conceal.

She came on slowly; her bows, the high, clumsy bows pointed towards us, the water turning from her forefront. She came on; she was near at hand. We saw her plainly—saw the rotted planks, the crumbling rigging, the rust-corroded metal-work, the broken rail, the gaping deck, and I could imagine that the clean water broke away from her sides in refluent wavelets as though in recoil from a thing unclean.

She stood before me, wondering, amazed. Alas, so changed! The red-and-yellow silk shawl still covered her shoulders; her hair still hung in those eldritch curls. But the beautiful face had grown wan and tired, and across the forehead lines were drawn like silver threads.