“At length my morbid broodings worked out their natural result.  A dull melancholy settled upon me which nothing could break.  Even the news that my cousin who had lost her husband a month after marriage, had returned to America with expectation to remain, scarcely caused a ripple in my apathy.  Was I sinking into a hypochrondriac? or was my passion for the beautiful brunette dead?  I determined to solve the doubt.

“Seeking her where I knew she would be found, I gazed again upon her beauty.  It was absolutely nothing to me.  A fair young face with high thoughts in every glance floated like sunshine between us and I left the haughty Countess, with the knowledge burned deep into my brain, that the love I had considered slain was alive and demanding, but that the object of it past recall, was my lost young wife.

“Once assured of this, my apathy vanished like mist before a kindled torch.  Henceforth the future held a hope, and life a purpose.  I would seek my wife throughout the world and bring her back if I found her in prison between the men whose existence was a curse to my pride.  But where should I turn my steps?  What golden thread had she left in my hand by which to trace her through the labyrinth of this world?  I could think of but one, and that was the love which would restrain her from going away from me too far.  The Luttra of old would not leave the city where her husband lived.  If she was not changed, I ought to be able to find her somewhere within this great Babylon of ours.  Wisdom told me to set the police upon her track, but pride bade me try every other means first.  So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I began to pace the streets if haply I might see her face shine upon me from the crowd of passers by; a foolish fancy, unproductive of result!  I not only failed to see her, but anyone like her.

In the midst of the despair occasioned by this failure a thought flashed across me or rather a remembrance.  One night not long since, being uncommonly restless, I had risen from my bed, dressed me and gone out into the yard back of my house for a little air.  It was an unusual thing for me to do but I seemed to be suffocating where I was, and nothing else would satisfy me.  As you already surmise, it was the night on which disappeared the sewing girl of which you have so often spoken, but I knew nothing of that, my thoughts were far from my own home and its concerns.  You may judge what a state of mind I was in when I tell you that I even thought at one moment while I paused before the gate leading into —–­ Street that I saw the face of her with whom my thoughts were ever busy, peering upon me through the bars.