"'"The terrible misfortune which parted you?" I inquired.
"'"Yes," she said; "I never knew any man whose conversation, and intellect, and whole character, had such a power over me, altogether. But I couldn't deny, what my father always said, that he was continually in a most strangely excited condition. This I attributed to causes which we knew nothing about, perhaps some deep impression made upon his mind by something that had happened to him during the war, which he had been serving in; though my father thought drink was the cause of it. But I was right, as the event proved. One day he found me alone, and exhibited a state of mind, which I at first took for an outburst of the most passionate affection. But by-and-by, when he ran away, trembling in every limb as with a frost, and uttering unintelligible cries, I could only conclude it was insanity, and so it was, poor fellow! He had once happened to mention his address, and I remembered it. After we had seen nothing of him for some weeks, my father sent there to make inquiries. The landlady--or rather, the porter who waited on the lodgers--told our servant that he had gone mad some time before, and been taken to the asylum. I suppose it must have been lottery speculations which turned his head, for it seems he thought he was king of the Ambé."'
"'Good gracious!' cried Marzell, 'that must have been Nettelmann. Ambé--Amboyna.'
"'It may have been some confusion,' said Severin under his breath. 'I seem to see daylight through it, but go on, please.'
"Alexander looked at Severin with a sad smile, and then continued:
"'My mind was now at ease, and soon the young lady and I were engaged, and the wedding day fixed. I wanted to sell my house, for the ghostly noises were still heard in it now and then. But my father-in-law advised me not to do so, and so it came about that I told him the whole story. He is a jovial sort of man, full of vital energy; but he grew deeply thoughtful over this, and spoke about it in a way that I hadn't expected.
"'"People used to have a pious simple faith," he said. "We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone. Keep you the house, and leave the rest to me."
"'I was astonished when he settled that the marriage should take place in the drawing-room of my house, and on the day of the Feast of the Invention of the Cross; and still more when he had everything arranged just as it had been on the celebrated day of my aunt's marriage--that was to have been. Mistress Anne crept about, in whispered prayer, her face contracted with anxious alarm. The bride came in her wedding dress, the clergyman arrived nothing out of the common was to be heard or seen. But when the blessing was pronounced, a gentle sigh seemed to pass through the room; and the bride, and I myself, and every one present declared that at that instant we all felt an indescribable sense of happiness strike through us like an electric spark. Since that moment there never has been the slightest trace of anything haunting me, except to-day, when thinking vividly of the charming Pauline, did bring a haunting something into my married happiness."
"This Alexander said with an odd smile, and looking round him.
"'Oh! you donkey!' said Marzell. 'I hope she may not turn up here to-day. I really shouldn't like to answer for the consequences.'