Prior to this event, his son, the younger Captain Allen, had brought home from Cuba a Spanish woman, who took the name of his wife.  Of her family, or antecedents, no one in our town knew anything; and it was questioned by many whether any rite of marriage had ever been celebrated between them.  Of this, however, nothing certain was known.  None of the best people, so called, in S——­paid her the hospitable compliment of a visit; and she showed no disposition to intrude herself upon them.  And so they stood towards each other as strangers; and the Allen house remained, as from the beginning, to most people a terra incognita.

Neither Captain Allen nor his Spanish consort, to whom no children were born, as they advanced in years, “grew old gracefully.”  Both had repulsive features, which were strongly marked by passion and sensuality.  During the last two years of his life I was frequently called to see him, and prescribe for his enemy, the gout, by which he was sorely afflicted.  Mrs. Allen also required treatment.  Her nervous system was disordered; and, on closer observation, I detected signs of a vagrant imagination, leading her away into states verging upon insanity.  She was fretful and ill-tempered; and rarely spoke to the Captain except complainingly, or in anger.  The visits I made to the Allen house, during the lifetime of Captain Allen, were among the most unsatisfactory of all my professional calls.  I think, from signs which met my eyes, that something more than bitter words passed occasionally between the ill-matched couple.

Late in the day, nearly five years anterior to the time of which I am now writing, I was summoned in haste to visit Captain Allen.  I found him lying on a bed in the north-west chamber, where he usually slept, in a state of insensibility.  Mrs. Allen received me at the door of the chamber with a frightened countenance.  On inquiry as to the cause of his condition, she informed me that he had gone to his own room about an hour before, a little the worse for a bottle of wine; and that she had heard nothing more from him, until she was startled by a loud, jarring noise in his chamber.  On running up stairs, she found him lying upon the floor, insensible.

I looked at her steadily, as she gave me this relation, but could not hold her eyes in mine.  She seemed more uneasy than troubled.  There was a contused wound just below the right temple, which covered, with its livid stain, a portion of the cheek.  A cursory examination satisfied me that, whatever might be the cause of his fall, congestion of the brain had occurred, and that but few chances for life remained.  So I informed Mrs. Allen.  At the words, I could see a shudder run through her frame, and an expression of something like terror sweep over her face.

“His father died of apoplexy,” said she in a hoarse whisper, looking at me with a side-long, almost stealthy glance, not full and open-eyed.

“This is something more than apoplexy,” I remarked; still observing her closely.