Bannerworth Hall.

"Flora Bannerworth is not now the person she was when first I
knew her and loved her. Such being the case, and she having
altered, not I, she cannot accuse me of fickleness.

"I still love the Flora Bannerworth I first knew, but I cannot
make my wife one who is subject to the visitations of a vampyre.

"I have remained here long enough now to satisfy myself that this
vampyre business is no delusion. I am quite convinced that it is
a positive fact, and that, after death, Flora will herself become
one of the horrible existences known by that name.

"I will communicate to you from the first large city on the
continent whither I am going, at which I make any stay, and in
the meantime, make what excuses you like at Bannerworth Hall,
which I advise you to leave as quickly as you can, and believe me
to be, my dear uncle, yours truly,

"CHARLES HOLLAND."

Henry's letter was this:--

"MY DEAR SIR,

"If you calmly and dispassionately consider the painful and
distressing circumstances in which your family are placed, I am
sure that, far from blaming me for the step which this note will
announce to you I have taken, you will be the first to give me
credit for acting with an amount of prudence and foresight which
was highly necessary under the circumstances.

"If the supposed visits of a vampyre to your sister Flora had
turned out, as first I hoped they would, a delusion and been
in any satisfactory manner explained away I should certainly have
felt pride and pleasure in fulfilling my engagement to that young
lady.

"You must, however, yourself feel that the amount of evidence in
favour of a belief that an actual vampyre has visited Flora,
enforces a conviction of its truth.

"I cannot, therefore, make her my wife under such very singular
circumstances.

"Perhaps you may blame me for not taking at once advantage of the
permission given me to forego my engagement when first I came to
your house; but the fact is, I did not then in the least believe
in the existence of the vampyre, but since a positive conviction
of that most painful fact has now forced itself upon me, I beg to
decline the honour of an alliance which I had at one time looked
forward to with the most considerable satisfaction.

"I s