truth!

"At last I arrived at--; my carriage stopped at the very house--my whole
frame was perfectly frozen with dread--I trembled from limb to limb--the
ice of a thousand winters seemed curdling through my blood. The bell
rung--once, twice--no answer. I would have leaped out of the carriage--I
would have forced an entrance, but I was unable to move. A man fettered
and spell-bound by an incubus, is less helpless than I was. At last, an
old female I had never seen before, appeared.

"'Where is she? How!' I could utter no more--my eyes were fixed upon the
inquisitive and frightened countenance opposite to my own. Those eyes, I
thought, might have said all that my lips could not; I was deceived--the
old woman understood me no more than I did her; another person
appeared--I recognized the face--it was that of a girl, who had been one
of our attendants. Will you believe, that at that sight, the sight of
one I had seen before, and could associate with the remembrance of the
breathing, the living, the present Gertrude, a thrill of joy flashed
across me--my fears seemed to vanish--my spell to cease?

"I sprung from the carriage; I caught the girl by the robe. 'Your
mistress,' said I, 'your mistress--she is well--she is alive--speak,
speak?' The girl shrieked out; my eagerness, and, perhaps, my emaciated
and altered appearance, terrified her; but she had the strong nerves
of youth, and was soon re-assured. She requested me to step in, and
she would tell me all. My wife (Gertrude always went by that name), was
alive, and, she believed, well, but she had left that place some weeks
since. Trembling, and still fearful, but, comparatively, in Heaven, to
my former agony, I followed the girl and the old woman into the house.

"The former got me some water. 'Now,' said I, when I had drank a long
and hearty draught, 'I am ready to hear all--my wife has left this
house, you say--for what place?' The girl hesitated and looked down;
the old woman, who was somewhat deaf, and did not rightly understand my
questions, or the nature of the personal interest I had in the reply,
answered,--'What does the gentleman want? the poor young lady who was
last here? Lord help her!'

"'What of her?' I called out, in a new alarm. 'What of her? Where has
she gone? Who took her away?'

"'Who took her?' mumbled the old woman, fretful at my impatient tone;
'Who took her? why, the mad doctor, to be sure!'

"I heard no more; my frame could support no long