rung--once, twice--no answer. I would have leaped out of the carriage--I
would have forced an entrance, but I was unable to move. A man fettered
and spell-bound by an incubus, is less helpless than I was. At last, an
old female I had never seen before, appeared.

"'Where is she? How!' I could utter no more--my eyes were fixed upon the
inquisitive and frightened countenance opposite to my own. Those eyes, I
thought, might have said all that my lips could not; I was deceived--the
old woman understood me no more than I did her; another person appeared--
I recognized the face--it was that of a girl, who had been one of our
attendants. Will you believe, that at that sight, the sight of one I had
seen before, and could associate with the remembrance of the breathing,
the living, the present Gertrude, a thrill of joy flashed across me--my
fears seemed to vanish--my spell to cease?

"I sprung from the carriage; I caught the girl by the robe. 'Your
mistress,' said I, 'your mistress--she is well--she is alive--speak,
speak?' The girl shrieked out; my eagerness, and, perhaps, my emaciated
and altered appearance, terrified her; but she had the strong nerves of
youth, and was soon re-assured. She requested me to step in, and she
would tell me all. My wife (Gertrude always went by that name), was
alive, and, she believed, well, but she had left that place some weeks
since. Trembling, and still fearful, but, comparatively, in Heaven, to my
former agony, I followed the girl and the old woman into the house.

"The former got me some water. 'Now,' said I, when I had drank a long and
hearty draught, 'I am ready to hear all--my wife has left this house, you
say--for what place?' The girl hesitated and looked down; the old woman,
who was somewhat deaf, and did not rightly understand my questions, or
the nature of the personal interest I had in the reply, answered,--'What