“Lady, my tears streamed for having formed an early attachment for one, who deserved not my affection. I once adored Emmeline of Sargans; but I tore her from my heart, convinced that it was impossible for _her_ to be virtuous, who had been educated in the very lap of vice. Yet Amalberga, Emmeline’s sister, and who had been educated with her, was modest, pure, and irreproachable; then why not Emmeline? What had since happened to that unfortunate was unknown to me; and my disagreement with her brother-in-law prevented my obtaining that information from him, which I was now most anxious to obtain; for one of his expressions had cut me to the very soul, and I strove in vain to banish it from my memory. He told me, “that my rigour had driven Emmeline into the jaws of perdition;” and while his words lay heavy upon my heart, I could not but own, that it was possible for his accusation to be well-founded. An union with an honest man, such as Herman of Werdenberg boasts himself to be, would have been the best and most certain means of rescuing her from the power of her licentious father and the contagion of his example. Yet what could I do? Say, that I was mistaken in my judgment of Emmeline; still was it incumbent on me to run so great a risque to preserve her, as to entrust the care of my honour to one, who I feared would prove a wanton? “But at all events, these considerations came too late. Nothing was now left for me but to banish recollections which, (Heaven only knows, why) intruded themselves upon me so forcibly, and which certainly were the most absurd and fruitless, with which I could have employed my mind. Yet still they _did_ employ it in spite of all my efforts, as I sat with my eyes sometimes fixed on the dark vaults which frowned above me, sometimes on the glimmerings of the distant lamp, without being conscious what it was, at which I was gazing. At length incensed at my own folly I started from my seat, and was quitting the vault abruptly, when a faint murmur struck my hearing. “I stopped. It was not the first time, that I had heard something like a groan, while traversing these vaults; but I had always supposed the noise to be occasioned by the wind, or else to be the echo of my own heart-drawn sighs. But now it was not only more loud and more distinct, but I almost fancied, that it was followed by sounds resembling words spoken by one in agony. “I hastened back to the place, which I had just quitted. I shouted, to observe whether an echo would answer me, but all was silent.—I removed to a distance; I came back again; I placed my head against the wall of the cavern; I knelt, and laid my ear to the ground; I heard the noise again. I endeavoured to trace it; still it continued, sometimes louder, sometimes weaker; till at length it conducted me to a small iron grating inserted in the ground, and from whence the wind, which blew upon me, seemed to be more heavy and chilling, than that which I breathed in the vaults above.