, as if trembling at her own voice.

While they were still standing fearfully at the window, motionless
as statues, the strange wanderer had reached the castle, had passed
up the well-known stairs, and through the well-known halls, ever in
silent tears. Alas! how differently had she once wandered through
them!

The knight, partly undressed, had already dismissed his attendants,
and in a mood of deep dejection he was standing before a large
mirror; a taper was burning dimly beside him. There was a gentle tap
at his door. Undine used to tap thus when she wanted playfully to
tease him "It is all fancy," said he to himself; "I must seek my
nuptial bed."

"So you must, but it must be a cold one!" he heard a tearful voice
say from without, and then he saw in the mirror his door opening
slowly--slowly--and the white figure entered, carefully closing it
behind her. "They have opened the spring," said she softly, "and now
I am here, and you must die."

He felt in his paralyzed heart that it could not be otherwise, but
covering his eyes with his hands he said: "Do not make me mad with
terror in my hour of death. If you wear a hideous face behind that
veil, do not raise it, but take my life, and let me see you not."

"Alas!" replied the figure, "will you then not look upon me once
more? I am as fair as when you wooed me on the promontory."

"Oh, if it were so!" sighed Huldbrand, "and if I might die in your
fond embrace!"

"Most gladly, my loved one," said she; and throwing her veil back,
her lovely face smiled forth divinely beautiful. Trembling with love
and with the approach of death, she kissed him with a holy kiss; but
not relaxing her hold she pressed him fervently to her, and as if
she would weep away her soul. Tears rushed into the knight's eyes,
and seemed to surge through his heaving breast, till at length his
breathing ceased, and he fell softly back from the beautiful arms of
Undine, upon the pillows of his couch--a corpse.

"I have wept him to death," said she to some servants who met her in
the ante-chamber; and, passing through the affrighted group, she
went slowly out toward the fountain.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW THE KNIGHT HULDBRAND WAS BURIED.

Father Heilmann had returned to the castle as soon as the death of
the lord of Ringstetten had been made known in the neighborhood, and
he appeared at the very same moment that the monk who had married
the unfortunate couple was fleeing from the gates overw