with your father,' she said impressively--'you alone. The honour of your
family depends upon you!' And so we returned. A fortnight after my mother
died, leaving me her will to accomplish and her example to follow. I have
scrupulously obeyed her injunctions as a sacred command, but oh, at what
a sacrifice! You have seen it all. I have been obliged to disobey my
father and to rend his heart. If I had married I should have brought a
stranger into the house and betrayed the secret of our race. I resisted.
No one in this castle knows of the somnambulism of my father, and but for
yesterday's crisis, which broke down my strength completely and prevented
me from sitting up with my father, I should still have been its sole
depositary. God has decreed otherwise, and has placed the honour and
reputation of my family in your keeping. I might demand of you, sir, a
solemn promise never to reveal what you have seen to-night. I should
have a right to do so."

"Madam," I said, rising, "I am ready."

"No, sir," she replied with much dignity, "I will not put such an affront
upon you. Oaths fail to bind base men, and honour alone is a sufficient
guarantee for the upright. You will keep that secret, sir, I know you
will keep it, because it is your duty to do so. But I expect more than
this of you, much more, and this is why I consider myself obliged to tell
you all!"

She rose slowly from her seat.

"Doctor Fritz," she resumed in a voice which made every nerve within me
quiver with deep emotion, "my strength is unequal to my burden; I bend
beneath it. I need a helper, a friend. Will you be that friend?"