ed after some hesitation:
'Dearest, I am terrified at Ernestine; she has become quite malicious,
though formerly she had not the least disposition that way. Whenever
she can vex me, spoil any thing, or even expose me to danger, so that I
may be startled, stumble, or even fall; or if any stones fall in my way
she shows the most malicious joy, as she did when she lately set the
curtains of my bed on fire by bringing the candle too near them. She
has told me laughing, that the country people talk of travellers and
rangers having seen two spectres by moonlight, or in the morning-dawn
in the lonely parts of the forests, whom they describe as terrible
hideous beings; that these were herself and the old gipsy, and that she
only wished that the circumstance might appear in print, in order that
she, with her own signature, Ernestine Fraeulein von Jertz, might
contradict the story of ghosts, and state that she was one of the
imagined spirits. Is not all this terrible?'

"'Dear child,' said I, 'I must now tell you, in confidence, that I
believe she is mad.'

"'Is any malice, when it becomes a passion, any thing but madness?'
remarked Elizabeth, very naturally.

"On the approach of autumn we left the Klausenburg to take possession
of our new house, for, to my terror, I discovered a disposition to
melancholy in my wife, for which our solitude seemed any thing but
beneficial. While we were once walking through the ancient apartments
and the gothic hall, which was in tolerable preservation, and our
footsteps echoed in the solitary room, my wife started with a sudden
shudder. I asked the reason.

"'Oh! it is awful here,' she replied, trembling; 'I feel as if
invisible spectres haunted this place.' I was terrified, and the
thought that my wife's mind, like that of her sister, might perhaps
have suffered, stared at me like a monster.

"When residing in our new house, we often missed Ernestine, and on
inquiry, found that she staid in the Klausenburg and the ruins of the
old castle. Although we had been living on an unpleasant footing,
still my wife, as well as myself, could not help wishing her with us
when she was away. But how different was my life from that which I had
once pictured to myself when I courted Elizabeth!

"Other domestic calamities united with our sufferings to increase our
grief. That document, which, really constituted my fortune and
supported my existence, which proved that large sums were paid, and
so