had struck him as strange.  He began to suspect, I repeat, and the effect that this suspicion had on him, it would be impossible to describe to you.  Even now, after so long a time, now that I am accustomed to his ways, and more reconciled to my fate by the side of a noble, though somewhat impetuous man, it makes me tremble to think of those paroxysms, which the idea that I did not love him called forth.  They were fearful; he nearly sank under them.  During two days his life was in danger.  At last the storm passed, my father died; Jules watched over me with the tenderness of a brother, the solicitude of a parent; for that indeed I shall ever be grateful.  His suspicion once awakened, he gazed round with penetrating looks to discover the cause of my altered feelings.  But your friend never came to our house; we met in an unfrequented spot, and my father’s illness had interrupted these interviews.  Altogether I cannot tell if Jules discovered anything.  A fearful circumstance rendered all our precautions useless, and cut the knot of our secret connection, to loose which voluntarily I felt I had no power.  A wedding feast, at a neighboring castle, assembled all the nobility and gentry, and officers quartered near, together; my deep mourning was an excuse for my absence.  Jules, though he usually was happiest by my side, could not resist the invitation, and your friend resolved to go, although he was unwell; he feared to raise suspicion by remaining away, when I was left at home.  With great difficulty he contrived the first day to make one at a splendid hunt, the second day he could not leave his bed.  A physician, who was in the house, pronounced his complaint to be violent fever, and Jules, whose room joined that of the sick man, offered him every little service and kindness which compassion and good feeling prompted; and I cannot but praise him all the more for it, as who can tell, perhaps, his suspicion might have taken the right direction?  On the morning of the second day—­but let me glance quickly at that terrible time, the memory of which can never pass from my mind—­a fit of apoplexy most unexpectedly, but gently, ended the noblest life, and separated us forever!  Now you know all.  I inclose the ring.  I cannot write more.  Farewell!”

The conclusion of the letter made a deep impression on Edward.  His dream rose up before his remembrance, the slight indisposition, the sudden death, the fearful nursetender, all arranged themselves in order before his mind, and an awful whole rose out of all these reflections, a terrible suspicion which he tried to throw off.  But he could not do so, and when he met the captain and D’Effernay in the evening, and the latter challenged his visitors to a game of billiards, Edward glanced from time to time at his host in a scrutinizing manner, and could not but feel that the restless discontent which was visible in his countenance, and the unsteady glare of his eyes, which shunned the fixed look of others, only fitted