'O Baptista! O, for the Lord's sake! where is my mistress?'

'Mistress, Carolina?'

'Gone since morning - told me, when master went out on his day's
journey, not to call her, for she was tired with not resting in the
night (having been in pain), and would lie in bed until the
evening; then get up refreshed. She is gone! - she is gone!
Master has come back, broken down the door, and she is gone! My
beautiful, my good, my innocent mistress!'

The pretty little one so cried, and raved, and tore herself that I
could not have held her, but for her swooning on my arm as if she
had been shot. Master came up - in manner, face, or voice, no more
the master that I knew, than I was he. He took me (I laid the
little one upon her bed in the hotel, and left her with the
chamber-women), in a carriage, furiously through the darkness,
across the desolate Campagna. When it was day, and we stopped at a
miserable post-house, all the horses had been hired twelve hours
ago, and sent away in different directions. Mark me! by the Signor
Dellombra, who had passed there in a carriage, with a frightened
English lady crouching in one corner.

I never heard (said the Genoese courier, drawing a long breath)
that she was ever traced beyond that spot. All I know is, that she
vanished into infamous oblivion, with the dreaded face beside her
that she had seen in her dream.

'What do you call THAT?' said the German courier, triumphantly.
'Ghosts! There are no ghosts THERE! What do you call this, that I