In consideration of the day and hour of my birth birth , it was declared declare by the nurse , and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted , first , that I was destined to be unlucky in life ; and secondly , that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits ; both these gifts inevitably attaching , as they believed , to all unlucky infants of either gender , born towards the small hours on a Friday night .

Not to meander myself , at present , I will go back to my birth birth .

I dare not hesitate at a request from Mrs. Mirvan ; yet , in complying comply with it , I shall , for her own sake , be as concise as I possibly can ; since the cruel transactions which preceded the birth birth of my ward can afford no entertainment to a mind so humane as her 's .

Yet her sufferings were too acute for her slender frame ; and the same moment that gave birth birth to her infant , put an end end at once to the sorrows and the life of its mother .

But , from the time of her recovery recovery to the date of her letter to your Ladyship , I had never heard that she manifested any desire to be made acquainted with the circumstances which attended the death death of Lady Belmont , and the birth birth of her helpless child .

Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer 's hands ; but Sir Walter had improved improve it by adding add , for the information of himself and his family , these words , after the date of Mary 's birth birth -- " Married marry , December 16 , 1810 , Charles , son and heir of Charles Musgrove , Esq. of Uppercross , in the county of Somerset , " and by inserting insert most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost lose his wife .

Always to be presented with the date of her own birth birth and see no marriage follow but that of a youngest sister , made the book an evil ; and more than once , when her father had left it open on the table near her , had she closed it , with averted eyes , and pushed it away .