Carmilla

"Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again," I said

hastily.

"Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for

your sake I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?"

"No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be."

"I almost forget, it is years ago."

I laughed.

"You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet."

"I remember everything about it--with an effort. I see it all, as divers

see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but

transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture,

and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed,

wounded here," she touched her breast, "and never was the same since."

"Were you near dying?"

"Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my life.

Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to

sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door?"

She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under

her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes

followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could

not decipher.

I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable

sensation.

I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. I

certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never

came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night

she never left the drawing room to attend our brief evening prayers

in the hall.

If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless

talks that she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a

Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a

word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or

antipathy would not have so much surprised me.

The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like

temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had

adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into

my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling

assassins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search

through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber

was "ensconced."

These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light

was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and

which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.