ought
you knew she was to be buried today."

"She? I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know who she is,"
answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes.

"She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and
has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired."

"Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep tonight if you do."

"I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like
it," I continued. "The swineherd's young wife died only a week ago, and
she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed,
and nearly strangled her. Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany
some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank
afterwards, and died before a week."

"Well, _her_ funeral is over, I hope, and _her_ hymn sung; and our ears
shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous.
Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it
hard-hard-harder."

We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even
terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her
teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips,
while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over
with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies
seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly
tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her,
and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling
people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is
passing away."

And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the somber impression
which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and
chatty; and so we got home.

This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of
that delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of. It was the first
time, also, I had seen her exhibit anything like temper.

Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once afterwards did
I witness on her part a momentary sign of anger. I will tell you how
it happened.

She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing room windows, when
there entered the courtyard, over the drawbridge, a figure of a wanderer
whom I knew very well. He used to visit the schloss generally twice
a year.

It w