It did bog down in the middle if I remember right... or perhaps it was a mood. This might also explain it. But now that I'm back to it, this is so good!!
It starts off in perfect gothic style. In a storm. In a forest. With an enfeebled, young lady in need of shelter.
The lady and her manservant asking for shelter at a humble cottage of an old couple. But, being a lady, she can't rest well at the cottage. We don't know her name. We don't know why she is there. All we know is that she is alone (other than the manservant) and she is running from something.
The old couple only have the one bed, which is on the floor. "Growing faint from exhausted spirits," the lady lays down. "but, alas! horror and affliction precluded sleep." (I love the writing. It is so perfect.)
The next morning the lady is still too exhausted to travel on, but really can't stay in the one room cottage with the poor people, so she asks if there is a house nearby. The old woman says, no, but there is a castle nearby. But she wouldn't go there. The lady asks why. "O! dear madam, why it is haunted; there are bloody floors, prison rooms, and scriptions, they say, on the windows to make a body's hair stand on end."
Our lady heroine (she still doesn't have a name-- I wonder if Parsons started without a name in mind and never went back to correct it-- whatever-- she's still just "the lady") doesn't blink or react in horror or curiosity. She just asks how to get there. Can't say I blame her, really. In a choice between prison rooms and buckets of blood or sleeping on the floor with a bunch of old people snoring around you, I'd take my chances on the castle too.
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