The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice

dow,' she said. 'It is another fact,

g at once sad and cruel in it. It came slowly, and it went away suddenly. He began to doubt whether he had been wise in acting on his first i

ady w

r I had accepted him. When we next met in England-and when there was danger, no doubt, of the affair coming to my knowledge-he told me the truth. I was naturally indignant. He had his excuse ready; he showed me a letter from the lady herself, releasing him from his engagement. A more noble, a more high-minded letter, I never read in my life. I cried over it-I who have no tears in me for sorrows of my own! If the letter had left h

more facts, began to fear that he stood committed to a long story. 'Forgive me for reminding you that I have sufferin

ain on the lady's lips. 'Every word I have said is to the poin

med her

f her lover, the woman who had written the noble letter. Now listen! You were impatient with me for not interesting you in what I said just now. I said it to satisfy your mind that I had no enmity of feeling towards the lady, on my side. I admired her, I felt for her-I had no cause to reproach myself. This is very important, as you will presently see. On her side, I have reason to be

an to feel int

kable in the lady's perso

y English lady; the clear cold blue eyes, the fine rosy complexion, the inanimately polite ma

ssion, when you first looked at

firmly believe) any conscious exercise of her own will. In one indescribable moment I felt all this-and I suppose my face showed it. The good artless creature was inspired by a sort of gentle alarm for me. "I am afraid the heat of the room is too much for you; will you try my smelling bottle?" I heard her say those kind words; and I remember nothing else-I fainted. When I recovered my senses, the company had all gone; only the lady of the house was with me. For the moment I could say nothing to her; the dreadful impression that I have tried to describe to you came back to me with the coming back of my life. As soon I could speak, I implored her to tell me the whole truth about the woman whom I had supplanted. You see, I had a faint hope that her good character might not really be deserved, that her noble letter was a skilful piece of hypocrisy-in short, that she secretly hated me, and was cunning enough to hide it. No! the lady had been her friend from her girlhood, was as familiar with her as if they had been sisters-knew her positively to be as good, as innocent, as incapable of hating anybody, as the greatest saint that ever lived. My one last hope, that I had only felt an ordinary forewarning of danger in the p

his chair, determined

He tried vainly to think of her as a person to be pitied-a person with a morbidly sensitive imagination, conscious of the capacities for evil which lie dormant in us all, and striving

discover-as I understand it. As for the impressions you have confided to me, I can only say that yours is a case (as I venture to think) for spiritual rath

a certain dogged res

all?' s

all,' he

of money on the table. 'Than

ony that the Doctor turned away his head, unable to endure the sight of it. The bare idea of taking anything from her-not money only, b

upward, she said slowly to herself, 'Let the end

er face, bowed to the Do

stible-sprang up in the Doctor's mind. Blushing like a boy, he said to the servant, 'Follow her home, and find out her name.' For one moment the man looked at his master, doubting

lf in the eyes of his own servant? He had behaved infamously-he had asked an honest man, a man who had served him faithfully for years, to turn spy! Stung by the bare thought of it, he ran out into the hall again, and opene

self so little welcome at the bedside. Never before had he put off until to-morrow the prescription which ought to have been wri

med to question him. The man reported the res

s the Countess Nar

had vainly refused still lay in its little white paper covering on the table. He sealed it up in an envelope; addressed it to the 'Poor-box' of the nearest police-court; and, calling

ation he said, 'No: I

entence on him. In another state, he and his conscience are on the best possible terms with each other in the comfortable capacity of accomplices. When Doctor Wybrow left his