"The maid returned, and begged me to follow her. She drew back the curtain to let me pass. I entered a half-dark room, covered like all the others with thick, soft carpets, and hung with deep red-silk hangings, the chamber of the mistress of the house, and then through another curtain into a second room, light and bright. Of the furniture of this room I saw nothing; I saw only the slender, white form which rose when I entered from the divan on which she had been resting, and now advanced a few steps to meet me. And this slender, white form, with the pale, worn-out, beautiful face, in which the large dark eyes shone with almost ghastly brightness--this beautiful being, broken in body and soul, lost for eternity, was my Leonora, whom I had worshipped, and who had once been blooming like a rose in innocence and youth! "'I have sent for you, doctor,' she said in a low voice. "Then she raised her eyes and looked at me. Her lips grew silent; she stared at me with eyes which seemed to leap forth from their orbits; then she uttered a piercing cry and fell down, before I or her maid could seize her in our arms. "We carried her back to the divan. She was deadly pale and cold; I thought for a moment the sudden blow might have snapped the frail thread on which her life was hanging. I should have hailed her death as a rescue from hell, as a mercy from heaven. But soon I became convinced that life was not going to let her loose for some time yet. I knew enough of medicine to remember what was to be done in such an emergency. While I was busy with the fainting girl, I asked the maid if Leonora was at all subject to such attacks; what was the general state of her health? The woman thought it her duty to drop her assumed respectability before a physician. 'She had been only about six months in the service of mademoiselle. Since then matters had gone down hill very fast indeed. But mademoiselle was really living too fast in all conscience. Dancing every night till three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking champagne without stopping--no one could stand that long, least of all a lady of such delicate structure. She was begging mademoiselle every day to abandon such a life, but she received always the same answer: the sooner it is over the better. And over it will be very soon,' cried the woman; 'and I shall lose my poor dear mistress, whom I love like my own child, although she does not lead a life such as she ought to lead.'