“And why?” I asked, both mortified and curious.

“Because the poor young lady is dead,” he replied.  “I quite forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the General’s letter this evening.”

I was very much shocked.  General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger.

“Here is the General’s letter,” he said, handing it to me.  “I am afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been written very nearly in distraction.”

We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees.  The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky.  General Spielsdorf’s letter was so extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over—­the second time aloud to my father—­and was still unable to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind.

It said “I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her.  During the last days of dear Bertha’s illness I was not able to write to you.

“Before then I had no idea of her danger.  I have lost her, and now learn all, too late.  She died in the peace of innocence, and in the glorious hope of a blessed futurity.  The fiend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality has done it all.  I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Bertha.  Heavens! what a fool have I been!

“I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings.  She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery.  I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster.  I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose.  At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me.  I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blindness, my obstinacy—­all—­too late.  I cannot write or talk collectedly now.  I am distracted.  So soon as I shall have a little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may possibly lead me as far as Vienna.  Some time in the autumn, two months hence, or earlier if I live, I will see you—­that is, if you permit me; I will then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now.  Farewell.  Pray for me, dear friend.”

In these terms ended this strange letter.  Though I had never seen Bertha Rheinfeldt my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence; I was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed.