"carmilla" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fanu J Sheridan Le)

"Because the poor young lady is dead," he replied. "I quite forgot I had
not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the General's
letter this evening."



I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first
letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would
wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of
danger.



"Here is the General's letter," he said, handing it to me.



"I am afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have
been written very nearly in distraction."



We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees.
The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour behind the sylvan
horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the
steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble
trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of
the sky. General Spielsdorf's letter was so extraordinary, so vehement,
and in some places so self- contradictory, that I read it twice over--the
second time aloud to my father--and was still unable to account for it,
except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind.



It said, "I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her.
During the last days of dear Bertha's illness I was not able to write to
you. Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now
learn all , too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the
glorious hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who betrayed our infatuated
hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house
innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what
a fool have I been! I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the
cause of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the
nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this
misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a
monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful
purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I