I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not only ture, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eyewitness.
It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful forest vista which I have mentioned as lying in front of the schloss.
"General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had expected," said my father, as we pursued our walk.
He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece and ward, Medemoiselle Rheinfeldt, whom I had never seen, but whom I had heard described as a very charming girl, and in whose society I had prmised myself many happy days. I was more disappointed then a young lady living in a town, or a bustling neighbourhood can possibly imagine. This visit, and the new aquaintance it promised, had furnished my day dream for many weeks.
"And how soon does he come?" I asked.
"Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare to say," he answered. "And I am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt."
"And why?" I asked, both mortified and curious.
"Because the poor young lady is dead," he replied. "I quite forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I recieved the General's letter this evening."
I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger.
"Here is the General's letter," he said, handing it to me. "I am afraid he is in the great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been written very nearly in distraction."
We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour behind the sylvan horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have mentioned, would through many a group of noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky. General Spielsdorf's letter was extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over--the second time aloud to my father--and was still unable to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind.
Sorry, but due to the length of this story I had to finish here. Typing this one would have taken me far too long. I can recommend it though from Amazon; such stories are found in great anthologies. This story was copied from a book published by Penguin. Again, sorry
