Page:Tales of the Dead.djvu/98

 acquainted, in proper time, with all it concerns you to know.’

At a proper time!’ repeated I, in a plaintive voice; for it appeared to me, that since I had learned so much, it was high time that I should be made acquainted with the whole.

“The same evening I mentioned my wishes to my father: but he was inexorable. He fancied that possibly what had happened to Seraphina might have arisen from her disordered and overheated imagination. However, three days afterwards, my sister finding herself so ill as to be obliged to keep her bed, my father’s doubts began to be shaken; and although the precise day of Seraphina’s death had not been named to me, I could not avoid observing by her paleness, and the more than usually affectionate manner of embracing my father and me, that the time of our eternal separation was not far off.

Will the clock soon strike nine?’ asked Seraphina, while we were sitting near her bed in the evening.

Yes, soon,’ replied my father.

Well then! think of me, dear objects of my affection:—we shall meet again.’ She pressed our hands; and the clock no sooner struck, than she fell back in her bed, never to rise more.

“My father has since related to me every particular as it happened; for at that time I was so