The clear laugh rang out once again on the stillness--its brightness pierced my brain like a sharp sword! She was happy--she was even merry--she wandered here in the moonlight joyous-hearted, while I--I had expected to find her close shut within her room, or else kneeling before the Mater Dolorosa in the little chapel, praying for my soul's rest, and mingling her prayers with her tears! Yes--I had expected this--we men are such fools when we love women! Suddenly a terrible thought struck me.

Had she gone mad?
Had the shock and grief of my so unexpected death turned her delicate brain?
Was she roaming about, poor child, like Ophelia, knowing not whither she went, and was her apparent gayety the fantastic mirth of a disordered brain?
I shuddered at the idea--and bending slightly apart the boughs behind which I was secreted, I looked out anxiously.

Two figures were slowly approaching--my wife and my friend, Guido Ferrari.

Well--there was nothing in that--it was as it should be--was not Guido as my brother?
It was almost his duty to console and cheer Nina as much as lay in his power.

But stay! stay! did I see aright--was she simply leaning on his arm for support--or--a fierce oath, that was almost a cry of torture, broke from my lips! Oh, would to God I had died! Would to God I had never broken open the coffin in which I lay at peace! What was death--what were the horrors of the vault--what was anything I had suffered to the anguish that racked me now?
The memory of it to this day burns in my brain like inextinguishable fire, and my hand involuntarily clinches itself in an effort to beat back the furious bitterness of that moment! I know not how I restrained the murderous ferocity that awoke within me--how I forced myself to remain motionless and silent in my hiding-place.