“‘I had been married one year when my wife enquired of me who the beautiful girl was whom I was in the habit of attending to places of public amusement. I was prepared for this, and told her that it was a Turkish lady, the wife of a sea captain, a particular friend of mine, who was absent at sea. Adela insisted on being introduced to her, for she said she felt a great curiosity to look on the woman whose beauty had become the theme of every tongue. Here was a dilemma for which I was utterly unprepared. I could make no reasonable excuse, and the hesitancy and embarrassment of my manner excited or confirmed suspicion. It seemed that Adela was completely a woman, and determined to gratify her curiosity, although by so doing she made herself wholly miserable. When I next visited Alma I found her sorrowful and pale. She had been visited by a lady, whom, from her description, I knew to be my wife, who had drawn from her artless tongue her whole history, and then set before her the ignominy and sinfulness of her present situation. These were strange words for the poor girl’s ear, yet I succeeded in calming her mind, and left her with emotions of such sorrow as I never felt before. I fully comprehended the wrong that I had done her, and the anguish that must from this time be her portion. I felt angry at Adela, and yet how could I blame her. She discovered a coldness and restraint in my manner, and became herself cold and restrained; in short, we were all three wretched. Adela in her zeal employed her confessor to teach Alma the mysteries of religion. Alma was ever in tears; and Adela began to pine and waste away. At length she became so ill that the physician declared that nothing could help her unless it were a journey and short residence in Italy. But before I set forward I conveyed Alma to this castle, and placed her in the tower which superstition had cast a spell around; entrusting her to the sole care of an aged female domestic, lest during my absence she should be persuaded to enter a convent. “‘I came home widowed, but not in heart. I flew to Alma, and told her there was no drawback on our happiness now; that she should now possess both hand and heart. She wept long and agonisingly upon my bosom, and then told me that the magic glass of life was broken. That the clear cold light of reality now lay upon all the ways of love. That earth to her was no longer a blissful paradise. And finally, that she had resolved to enter a nunnery. Oh! the agony of that hour. I sought by every argument to divert her from her purpose, but she was unyielding. For a long time I refused to let her go, and kept her prisoner in the tower. But when I could by no means move her, when she turned ever weeping from me, or kneeling besought me no longer to keep her from the court of heaven, I gave her the keys of her prison, and left the castle. I returned after a few days. She was gone. I was desolate; and from that hour I have been dying.