Odile smiled bitterly and went on:—­

“Sometimes I would happen, in my noisy play, to disturb my mother in her silent walk; then she would stop, look down, and, seeing me at her feet, would slowly bend, kiss me with an absent smile, and then again resume her interrupted walk and her sad gait.  Since then, sir, whenever I have desired to search back in my memory for remembrances of my early days that tall, pale woman has risen before me, the image of melancholy.  There she is,” pointing to a picture on the wall—­“there she is!—­not such as illness made her as my father supposes, but that fatal and terrible secret.  See!”

I turned round, and as my eye dwelt upon the portrait the lady pointed to, I shuddered.

It was a long, pale, thin face, cold and rigid as death, and only luridly lighted up by two dark, deep-set eyes, fixed, burning, and of a terrible intensity.

There was a moment’s silence.

“How much that woman must have suffered!” I said to myself with a pain striking at my heart.

“I know not how my mother made that terrible discovery,” added Odile, “but she became aware of the mysterious attraction of the Black Pest and their meetings in Hugh Lupus’s tower; she knew it all—­all!  She never suspected my father—­ah no!—­but she perished away by slow degrees under this consuming influence! and I myself am dying.”

I bowed my head into my hands and wept in silence.

“One night,” she went on, “one night—­I was only ten—­and my mother, with the remains of her superhuman energy, for she was near her end that night, came to me when I lay asleep.  It was in winter; a stony cold hand caught me by the wrist.  I looked up.  Before me stood a tall woman; in one hand she held a flaming torch, with the other she held me by the arm.  Her robe was sprinkled with snow.  There was a convulsive movement in all her limbs and her eyes were fired with a gloomy light through the long locks of white hair which hung in disorder round her face.  It was my mother; and she said, ’Odile, my child, get up and dress!  You must know it all!’ Then taking me to Hugh Lupus’s tower she showed me the open subterranean passage.  ‘Your father will come out that way,’ she said, pointing to the tower; ’he will come out with the she-wolf; don’t be frightened, he won’t see you.’  And presently my father, bearing his funereal burden, came out with the old woman.  My mother took me in her arms and followed; she showed me the dismal scene on the Altenberg of which you know.  ‘Look, my child,’ she said; ’you must for I—­am going to die soon.  You will have to keep that secret.  You alone are to sit up with your father,’ she said impressively—­’you alone.  The honour of your family depends upon you!’ And so we returned.  A fortnight after my mother died, leaving me her will to accomplish and her example to follow.  I have scrupulously obeyed her injunctions as a sacred command, but oh, at what a sacrifice!