V

“I had scarcely finished the sentence, when the same mysterious voice exclaimed, ‘You shall not go. The seal of death is on her lips. Her silence is the silence of the tomb.’ Think of the effects which accents like these must have had upon me. I shuddered as I listened. As soon as I recovered from my first amazement, ‘Who is it that speaks?’ said I, ‘whence did you procure these dismal tidings?’ I did not wait long for an answer. ‘From a source that cannot fail. Be satisfied. She is dead.’ You may justly be surprised, that, in the circumstances in which I heard the tidings, and notwithstanding the mystery which environed him by whom they were imparted, I could give an undivided attention to the facts, which were the subject of our dialogue. I eagerly inquired, when and where did she die? What was the cause of her death? Was her death absolutely certain? An answer was returned only to the last of these questions. ‘Yes,’ was pronounced by the same voice; but it now sounded from a greater distance, and the deepest silence was all the return made to my subsequent