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THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTESS: Or, A Horrible Mystery A Startling and Exciting Story BY SHERIDAN LE FANUE. coistci/utidieid. CHAPTER XIV.—The Meeting. “My beloved child,” he resumed, “ was now growing rapidly worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression upon her disease, for such I then supposed it to be. He saw my alarm, and sug gested r consultation. I called in an abler physician, from Gratz. Several days elapsed before he arrived. He was a good and pious, as well as a learned man. Having seen my poor ward together, they withdrew to my libra ry to confer and discuss. I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons, heard these two gentlemen’s voices raised in some- tell thing sharper than a strictly philosophical dis- , cussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found the old physician from Gratz maintain ing his theory. His rival was combatting it j with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly manifests- j tion subsided and the altercation ended on my j entrance. ‘ “Sir,” said my first physician, “my learned i brother seems to think that you want a conju- j ror, and not a doctor.” * “Pardon me,” said the old physician from Gratz, looking displeased, “I shall state my | own view of the case in my own way another after all, not about to enter and disturb this triste and ominous scene. The old General’s eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with bis hand upon the basement of a shattered monument. Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmount ed by one of those demoniacal grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the shadowy chapel. I was just about to rise and speak, and nod ded smiling, in answer to her peculiarly en gaging smile, when, with a cry, the old man by my side, caught up the woodman’s hatchet and started forward. On seeing him a brutalized change came over her features. It was an in stantaneous and horrible transformation, as she made a crouching step backwards. Bafore I could utter a soream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived under his blow, and unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist. He struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the axe fell to ground, and the girl was gone. He staggered against the wall. His grey hair stood upon his head, and a moisture shone over his face, as if he were at the point of death. The frightful scene had passed in a moment The first thing I recollect after, is Madame standing before me, and impatiently repeating again and again, the question, ‘Where is Made moiselle Carmilla ?’ I answered at length, ‘ I don't know—I can't she went there,’and I pointed to the door through which Madame had just entered; ‘only a minute or two since.’ ‘But I have been standing there, in the pas sage, ever since Mademoiselle Carmilla entered; and she did not return.’ She then began to call ‘Carmilla,’ through every door and passage and from the windows, but no answer came. ‘She called herself Carmilla?’ asked the Gen eral, still agitated. ‘ Carmilla, yes,’ I answered. ‘Aye,’ he said; ‘that is Millarca. That is the ame person who long ago was called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Depart from this accursed Drive to the clergyman's house, and stay there till we come. Begone! May you never beho Id Carmilla more; you will not find her here.’ time. I grieve, Monsieur le General, that by i ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can, my skill and science I can be of no use. Before J I go I shall do myself the honor to suggest | something to you.” -He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a i table and began to write. Profoundly disap- j pointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go the other doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and then, with j a shrug, significantly touched his forehead. | ‘This consultation, then, lett me precisely j where I was. I walked out into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor from Gratz, in ten or fifteen minutes, overtook me. He apol- j ogized for having followed me, but said that he CHAPTER XY. As he spoke one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld, entered the chapel at the door through which Carmilla had made her entrance and exit. Hb was tall, narrow-chested, stoop ing, with high shoulders, and dressed in black. His face was brown and dried in with deep fur rows; he wore an oddly-shaped hat with abroad leaf. His hair, long and grizzled, hung on his He wore a pair of gold spectacles, shoulders. _ could not conscientiously take his leave with- | and walked slowly, with au odd shambling gait, out a few words more. He told me that he | with his face sometimes turned up to the sky, could not be mistaken: no natural disease ex hibited the same symptoms; and that death was already very near. There remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life. If the fatal sei zure were at once arrested, with great care and skill, her strength might possibly return. But all hung now upon the confines of the irrevoca ble. One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality which is, every moment, ready to die. 4 “And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of?” I entreated. ‘ “1 have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands upon the distinct condition and sometimes bowed down toward the ground, i seemed to wear a perpetual smile; his long thin i arms were swinging, and his lank hands, m old black gloves ever so much too wide for them, j waving and gesticulating in utter abstraction. “The very man !” exclaimed the General, ad- , vancing with manifest delight. “My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you, I had no j hope of meeting you so soon.” He signed to my father, who had by this time returned, and . leading the fantastic old gentleman, whom he 1 called the Baron to meet him. He introduced J him formally, and they at once entered into earnest conversation. The stranger took a roll ancient and well-attested belief of the country. The next day the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel of Karnstein. The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened ; and the General and my father recognized each his per fidious and beautiful guest, in the face now dis closed to view. The features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open ; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the ooffin. The two medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the enquiry, attested the marvellous fact, that there was a faint but appreciable respiration,and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic, and the leaden ooffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed. Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might es cape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head were next placed on a pile of wood,and reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne a\^^y, and that territory has never since been plagued by the visits of a vam pire. My father has a report of the Imperial Com mission, with the signatures of all who were present at these proceedings, attached in verifi cation of the statement. It is from this official paper that I have summarized my account of this last shocking scene. CHAPTER XVI.—Conclusion. I write all this you suppose with composure. But far from it; I cannot think of it without agi tation. Nothing but your earnest desire so re peatedly expressed, could have induced me to sit down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for months to come, and reinduced a shadow of the unspeakable horror which years after my deliverance continued to make my days and nights dreadful, and solitude insupportably ter rific. Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenburg, to whose aurious lore we were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mi real la’s grave. He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family, in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvellously authenticated tradition ot Vam pirism. He had at his finger’s ends all the great and little works itpon the subject. ‘ Magia Pos- thuma,’ ‘Phlegonde Mirabilibus,’ ‘Augustus de cura pro Mortuis,’ ‘ Philosophies et Christianas Cogitationes de Vampiris,’ by John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial cases, from which he had extracted a.system of principles that appear to govern— gome always, and others occasionally only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved the vampire- life of the long-dead Countess Karnstein. How hat you send for the nearest clergyman, and : of paper from his pocket, and spread it on the ! they escape from their graves and return to and notes, which have guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception that he bad practiced. If he had intended any further action in this matter, death prevented him; and the band of a remote defendant has too late for many, directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast." We talked a little more, and among other things he said, was this: “One sign oi the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the General’s wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to it’s grasp; it leaves a numb ness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from.” The following spring my father took me a tour through Italy. We remained away for more than a year. It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with am biguous alternations—sametimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door. (THE end.) THE OLD TABBY HOUSE. BY GARNETT MclVOR. open uiy letter in his presence, and on no ac count read it until he is with you; you would despise it else, and it i°. a matter of life and death. Should the priest fail you, then, in deed, may you read it.” * He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish to see a man curiously learned upon the very subject, which, after I had read his letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he urged me earnestly to invite him to visit him there; and so took his leave. ‘The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a pencil-case in his fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from point to point on tlye paper, which from their often glancing from it, together, at certain points of the building, I concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He ac companied, what I may term, his lecture, with occasional readings from a dirty little book, whose yellow leaves were closely written over. them for certain hours every day, without dis placing the clay oj leaving any trace of disturb ance in the stat^AA^heiCoffin or the cerements, has always been trlmVlted to be utterly inexpli cable. The amphibious existence of the vam pire is sustained by daily renewed slumber iD the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an en- They sauntered together down the side aisle, grossing vehemence, resembling the passion of opposite to the spot where I was standing, con versing as they went; then they begun measur ing distances by paces, and finally they all stood letter by myself. At another time, or in an- ] together, facing a piece of the side-wall, which other case, it might have excited my ridicule. I they began to examine with great minuteness; But, into what quackeries will not people rush l pulling off the ivy that clung over it, and rap tor a last chance, where all accustomed means j ping the plaster with the ends of their sticks, have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at | scraping here, and knocking there. At length stake?” j they ascertained the existence of a broad marble ‘Nothing, you will say, could be more ab- j tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it. surd than the learned man’s letter. It was I With the assistance of the woodman, who soon monstrous enough to have consigned him to a j returned, a monumental inscription, and carved madhouse. He said the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire! The punctures which she described as having occurred near the throat, were, he insisted, the insertion of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are peculiar to vampires; and there could be no doubt, be added, as to the well-defiaed presence of the small livid mark which all concurred in describing as that in duced by the demon’s lips, and every symptom described by the sufferer was in exact confor mity with those recorded in every case of a sim ilar visitation. • Being myself wholly sceptical as to the ex istence of any such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor fur nished, in my opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that, rather than try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the latter. escutcheon, were disclosed. They proved to be those of the long lost monument of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. The old General, though not I fear given to the praviDg mood, raised his bauds and eyes to i heaven, in mute thanksgiving for some mo- i ments. “To-morrow,” I heard him him say; “the! commissioner will be here, and the Inquisition will be held according to law.” Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said: “Baron, now can I thank yon? How can we all thank you ? You will have delivered this re gion from a plague that has scourged its inhab itants for more than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked.” My father led the stranger aside, and the Gen eral followed. I knew that he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I ‘ I concealed myself in the dark dressing- | saw them glance often quickly at me, as the dis- room that opened upon the poor patient’s room, j cussion proceeded. in which a candle was burning, and watched \ My father came to me, kissed me again and there till she was fast asleep. I stood at the again, and leading me from the chapel, said: door, peeping through the small crevice, my j “It is time to return, but before we go home, sword laid on the table beside me, as my direc- i we must add to our party the good priest, who tions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw lives but a little way from this; and persuade him to accompany us to the schloss.” a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl’s throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating mass. For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward, with my 6word in hand. The black creature sud denly contracted toward the foot of the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror fixed on me, I saw Millarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed. Horrified, I pursued, and struck again. She W'rk gone: and my sword flew to shivers against the door. ‘ I cant’ describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The spectre Millarca was gone. But her victim was sinking very fast, and be fore the morning dawned, she died.’ The old General was agitated- We did not speak to him. My father walked to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled into the door of a side-chapel to prosecute his researches. The General leaned against the wall, dried hiB eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices died away. In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected, as it was, with the great titjed dead, whose monuments were mouldering among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore awfully upon my own mysterious case—in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls—a horror began to steal over me, and my •—-*• sank as I thought that my friends were, In this quest we were successful: and I was elad, being unspeakably fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay, on discovering that there were no tidings of Carmilla. Of the scene that had oc curred in the ruined chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that it was a secret which my father for the present deter mined to keep from me. The sinister absence of Carmilla made the re membrance ot the scene more horrible to me. The arrangements for that night were singular. Two servants, and Madame were to sit up in my room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my father kept watch in the adjoining dressing- room. The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport of which I did not un derstand any more than I comprehended the reason of this extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during slet p. I saw all clearly a few days later. The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of mv nightly sufferings. You have heard, uo doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails in upper and lower Styria, in Moravia, Silisia, in Turkish Servia, in Poland, even in Russia; tha superstition, so we must call it, of the Vampire. If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judiciously, before commissions in numerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as the Vampire. For my part I.havs heard no theory by which to explain what I myself have witnessed and experienced, other than that supplied by the love, by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and strat agem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement ot an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual ap proaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and stran gles and exhausts often at a single feast. The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to special conditions. In the partic ular instance of which I have given you a rela tion, Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name which, if not her real one, should at least repro duce, without the omission or addition of a sin gle letter, those, as we say, anagrammatically, which compose it, Carmilla did this; so did Mil larca. My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained with us for two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at Karnstein churchyard, and thea he asked the Baron how he had discovered the exact position of the long-concealed tomb of the Countess Mil larca ? The Baron’s grotesque features pucker ed up into a mysterious smile; he looked down, still smiling on his worn spectacle-case, and fumbled with it. Then looking up, he said : “I have many journals and other papers, written by that remarkable man; the most curi ous one among them, is one treating of the vis it of which you speak, to Karnstein. The tra dition of course, discolors and distorts a little. He might have been termed a Moravian noble man, for he had changed his abode to that terri tory, and was, beside, a noble. But he was, in truth, a native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say, that in very early youth he had been a passionate and favored lover of. the beautiful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her early death plunged him into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law. “Assume at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How does it begin and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himselt. A suicide, under certain circumstan ces, becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancester, Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course of the studies, to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal more. “Among other things, he concluded that sus picion of vampirism would probably fall, soon er or later, on the dead Countess, who in life had been his idoL He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her remains being pro faned by the outrage of a posthumous execu tion. He has left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphib ious existence, is projected into afar more hor rible life; and he resolved to .save his once be loved Mircalla from this. He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended remov al of her remains, and a real obliteration of her monument When age had stolen upon him, and from the vale of years he looked back on the scenes he was leaving, he considered, in a different spirit what he had done, and horror took possession oi him. He made the traoings CHAPTER V. —A Retkospect. At the appointed hour Major Barton and Miss Howard met in the blue parlor at Howard hall. ‘You told me this morning,’ said Miss How ard, ‘that you met Henry Gaston in Havana; when was it ?’ ‘Three years ago, last December,’ replied the Major; ‘let me see—I believe lean give you the precise date, as I kept a diary of that excur sion.’ * Never mind the day, that is not material. You are positive that there can be no mistake in the year, or the identity of the person ?’ ‘There can be none, I assure you, Miss How ard. As to the date, it is out of the question; as to the man, I knew him well enough to re cognize him on obtaining a full view of his face. Further, to make assurance doubly sure, I was called upon to intercede for him with the authorities for a garrulous little corregidor—a sort of petty magistrate—allowed him to be committed to prison on complaint of the segar- vendor for trespass. I waited upon the Ameri can consul, and by his agency the poor fellow was released from a Spanish prison, one of the most doleful places that human ingenuity ever contrived to build. In the civil information— in the petition to the consul, and a note, which by the way, I preserved, and have brought with me, the name is unmistakable—Henry Gaston.’ ‘So far it seems evident enough. Now, what do you know concerning the man himself? When and where did you meet him; what is the latest news you have had from him?’ ‘ As to my knowledge of his antecedents, Miss Howard, I confess that it is very slight, indeed. I met him some twenty years ago, in New York city, at the house of a friend. He was then a man in the prime of life—I mean on the sunny side of thirty, for a man may be said to be in his prime anywhere between forty and sixty, provided that —’ ‘ He has taken good care of himself, and gives a wide berth to care and anxiety—like yourself, for example. But excuse me, I did not intend to interrupt you, Major.’ ‘ Precisely so, Madam—I mean Miss Howard —longevity comes oi’ temperance, exercise, and cheerful temper. But this Mr. Gaston I met at the house of a friend—and I only remember that he was then a young widower, with two children, a boy and a girl. ‘ Villain of villains!’exclaimed the Major, his honest wrath bubbling up into phrases not al lowable in refined society, but the agitated wo man before him did not notice his words. He made the circuit of the room a time or two, and dropped into his chair. ‘Dastardly brute! he deserves to be roasted upon a slow fire a thou sand years!’ ‘ Major Barton,’ said Miss Howard, looking up to the face of the excited old gentleman, with an air of entreaty, * it is barely possible, after all, that this consummate villain has had some motive in coloring his own wickedness too deeply. You told me that, at the time of your first interview with this man yon heard it stated that he was then a widower—that his wife was dead ?’ *1 certainly did, madam.’ ‘Can you tell me the year, the month, the day if possible, of that meeting ?’ ‘Let me see—yes; I remember. It was the very week that the first case of Asiatic cholera was reported in the papers of New York. I re collect my departure from the city was hasten ed by that event.’ ‘Then it is possible that it was a real mar riage—and deplorable as the case remains, that lightens the burden of his crime. For a reason that I shall confide to you presently, it is pro foundly important that this fact should be de termined. Do you think that this man is still alive? Would it be possible to find him? Can you undertake the solution of this terrible enig ma? O, sir, if the happiness, the preservation of a young life—the good name, the fortune of a guileless, spotless young girl can influence you to undertake this mission—for her sake let me beg you—will you go ?’ ‘ To the ends of the earth, madam, or find him. And if his cowardly life can pay the for feit —’ ‘ My dear friend, do not talk of that. It is essential to the preservation of that young girl’s life that no harm should happon to him. If it were not so,— leave him to the vengeance of his God. As we hope for mercy from the Judge of all the earth, we should strive to forgive, if we cannot forget, the wrongs we have suffered. Yon will undertake this cause—money will be supplied you, for every necessity, for every use. But I promised to be more specific in my information to you. My young sister, a girl of seventeen, was at the Philadelphia seminary. She was always a little romantic in her ideas of marriage. Giddy and foolish, without any knowledge of the world beyond her own quiet family circle; with no brother or male relation except our father, she imbibed at an early age the romantic and unreal ideas of life contained in silly novels. The neatly expressed phrases in which everlasting devotion is vowed to beau tiful young ladies in current novels—the grace less young scamps who are reformed by mar riage into noblemen and heroes of unlimited perfections—the tyranny of heartless fathers and ambitions mothers who sacrifice their daughters on the altar of mammon—and I know not what else of the false, the unreal trash which impressible minds absorb as truth, prepared my poor Ethel for anything that sa vored of romance. She was the youngest child, and was petted and spoiled. We, her sisters, were already grown to womanhood when she was born; and to us, as to our parents, she was the child of bright promise. No cost was spar ed in her education—she had instructors in music, in painting, in languages—in every ac complishment, It was our dear father’s specia- desire that she should become a French scholl ar, and there was at that time a noted professor of that language in the Philadelphia seminary. If his services could have been obtained at our home, Ethel would never have been committed to the care of a boarding-school principal. But, the professor was ambitious—my father was re solved upon his services —and we reluctantly gave her up to the guardianship of a woman whom we had every reason to trust. She did not enter the school as an ordinary pupil; she His wife had been dead only a few weeks, if I recollect aright, and j was simply a resident scholar; subject to none something was then said about his expected of the rules of the institution, she became a marriage to a great heiress, somewhere; but member of the family of the principal, and was having met him by accident, I thought nothing treated with as much consideration, and had as of the matter. He was a man of very jovial i much freedom as the daughters of the bouse. habits—loved good wine, kept late hours, and was welcome company anywhere. A few weeks afterwards, not more than five, I think, I heard of him in Philadelphia, connected with an es cape of a young school girl, either as a princi pal in the affair or an assistant, I am not cer tain which.’ ‘ Do you remember the particulars—the sem inary-—the name of the lady?’ * I do not. I was much engrossed with my own personal affairs at the time; in fact I was endeavoring to negotiate a sale of some property I owned there, to relieve myself of an embai- rassing debt, and I did not ku^v Gaston well enough to be interested in his affairs. Some time in the following winter I saw him in Ogle thorpe —’ ‘ In this city!’ exclaimed the lady. ‘Yes, in this city; whither he had come, he told me, to pay a visit to a relative. I had very little conversation with him, for he was then on his way to the steamer, returning, he told me, to Philadelphia. Several years after this I was in very poor health, and went to San Augustine to spend the winter. In a small town like that people get to know each other pretty well, in the course of a few months, and there I met Gaston again. I saw him almost every day, and he was the same jovial, rollicking fellow, ex cept at times he became very moody and fretful. I noticed that he did not relish any allusion to his past life, but, as he told me he had lost his second wife—the school-girl heroine I mention ed, for he had stolen her from a seminary and married her—I did not question him about the cause of his melancholy. He drank deeply— spent large sums at the gaming table—so I heard; for I never gambled—and suddenly he disappeared from the town. Where he went I did not hear, for it did not concern me in any way. There was some gossip about him in St, Augustine, but what it was I do not now remem ber. I did not see or hear of him again until the incident I mentioned as occurring in Ha vana, three years ago, last December. You have now all that I know concerning Henry Gaston.’ 4 1 am under a thousand obligations to you, sir, for these particulars. You Lave made out a clear case of identity. He is certainly the same Henry Gaston whose follies and crimes have occasioned more human misery than a thousand such lives as his can atone for. He is a villain of the deepest dye—a forger, a robber, and a murderer—worse, far worse—oh! God! of heav en! there is no name in the catalogue of crime black enough-to.describe his villainy!’ 4 And you know him, then, Miss Howard ?’ 4 1 never saw him, sir, and heaven forbid that I ever should; but his conduct has turned this house into an abode of death—a prison and a grave!’ ‘Bless my life!’ said Major Barton, rising from his chair, and trembling as if he were about to be incarcerated in a prison himself. ‘Bless me, madam, you do not mean to say —’ * I mean to say that the wretched girl whom he deluded into a mock marriage was my youngest sister, Ethel Howard!’ 4 Good heavens! madam, it cannot be possi ble!’ . * It is too true, sir. Would to God it were possible to state the case in more moderate terms. Horrible enough it wonld have been for a pure, sweet-spirited girl like her to marry a worthless spendthrift—bat to wrong her by a still more desperate and crushing infamy, he deoeived her into a false oeremony whilst he had a living wife!’ She remained a little more than six months be fore she visited us. We saw no change in her, except her increasing charms, for she bad grown into a graceful, beautiful woman. Only three months more of study—to read with her Pro fessor a certain course in French poetry—and her education would have been complete. In those three months our father was taken sick— not seriously, it was at first supposed, but in ten days’ time he died. The very week of his death, before a letter recalling her to Oglethorpe reached Philadelphia—Ethel had fled from the Seminary with a man whom.no one of the fam ily had ever seen ! What kind of story he told her, we never knew—for three years elapsed, before any intelligence reached us concerning her, and when at last we saw the poor child again, she was landed at our door, a mother and a maniac ? Miss Howard paused—a shudder passed over her, but only for a moment—she had been schooled by long suffering, into self-command. ‘Now, Major Barton,’ she said solemnly, ‘I must confide in your honor as a gentleman—a Christian gentleman—you must promise me not to breathe a word of this narrative without my permission —for it is necessary still to exercise caution. You promise?’ ‘Upon the honor of a gentleman !’ said the Major, and one glance at his honest face was security enough. ‘Then,’ said she, ‘you must know, further, that the poor, broken-hearted Ethel is in this house—and her daughter Ellen is the stranger who came to Howard Hall yesterday afternoon !’ ‘Bless my life,’ exclaimed the Major, ‘wonder upon wonders—everything is wonderful!’ The Major felt that this sublime axiom did not do justice to the case, but he had no other to express his astonishment. ‘Yes,’ continued Miss Howard, ‘they are here, under the same roof, mother and daugh ter, and neither knows the fact! Alas ! I have a difficult, a dangerous duty to perform ! How I shall succeed in preparing them for the meet ing, only the Allwise God can know. For the present* however, if you should meet Ellen, as it is exceedingly probable you will, I implore you not to breathe a word that relates to this matter. She has no thought of her mother’s presence here—indeed, she has been told by her English relatives, that Ethel has been dead many years. She has mourned her as dead, and the poor child speaks of her with all the tenderness of dutiful love, although she has only a very faint recollection of her. She was sent to England in her fourth year, and has remain ed at the manor house of her uncle ever since, until a few weeks ago. ‘ Only one word more, Major Barton, and I leave you to form your own plans. As early as possible, you will go to Havana—follow this man—find out the truth, the whole truth ot this dark history. I will give you written directions for your guidance, and letters of credit that will serve you anywhere, in Europe or America. A large fortune—the salvation of one unfortunate being, perhaps of two, is committed to your trust May God be with you, and aid you !’ 4 Amen!’ exclaimed the Major with a pious fervor, unknown to his responses in the church service. Slowly, majestically, the good-hearted man departed from Howard Hall that evening, and if ne spent many minutes ocx ling his excited brain under the China trees in the park—if he became wrapt in a reverie, whilst walking to and fro, that rendered him oblivious to ” salutations of passing acquaintances—if