"DEAREST CHARLES,--Your own true Edith writes to you in the flesh by our common but well-meaning enemy, Dr. Bleedem." "There!" he said, "that's what she thinks of you." "Enemy!" I cried, in astonishment. "Yes, enemy; but well-meaning, you see, she says," he continued, in a softened tone. He then continued to read: "The poor man thinks, no doubt, that he has achieved a great thing in bringing us privileged seers into the world of spirits back into this mundane sphere, fit only for beings of his order. Of course, what else could be expected of him? The nature of his profession, the grossness of his being, compel him to think and act in the way of grovelling mortals; but let us not be too hard upon him; he is a good man, and means well." "There!" he observed, "you see, she is charitably disposed towards you. I don't know that I feel disposed to be so lenient." At this odd beginning of a love-letter, and still odder allusion to myself, I fairly burst out laughing. "Oh! laugh away," he said; "it is a fine triumph to rob two beings of the very essence of their happiness." I had not done laughing, and he was nearly catching the infection. He observed in the words of his favourite poet, that, my lungs did crow like chanticleer, and I did laugh _sans_ intermission. He took up the letter again, and read a great portion to himself, or half aloud. I caught the following passage: "Do you remember, Charles, when, in the early days of our courtship, you used nightly to serenade me under my window in the enchanted castle, and how long it was before you knew that I, like yourself, had an earthly body that had an existence of its own? And when I told you that my parents--or rather, my adopted parents--were not in the land of spirits, but that they inhabited the same world in which, in the daytime, we ourselves were forced to vegetate; and when you thereupon asked me with whom I shared the castle, do you remember the horror, the rage, and indignation you felt when you heard that I was held captive within that enchanted castle by a horrible wizard, who tortured me and tried all his base arts to make me yield to his love? Oh! Charles, I often look back to that time. I can see the bold outline of that rude, massive building on a rock frowning on the lake below. I feel myself yet at my casement, gazing out in search of your bark, which passed nightly close to my window, and I fancy I hear your touch upon the lute reverberating through the night air. "With what horror I remember being torn from my window on that night by my captor, as I was waving my handkerchief to you on the lake. Oh! the torture I underwent within those unhallowed walls after you left me; the scenes I was compelled to witness, the oaths I was forced to hear; and then the infernal hideousness of the countenance of my demon captor!