This is an excerpt from the book Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
“But I had better relate everything in the order in which it occurred,” said the General. “You saw my dear ward-my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more beautiful, and only three months ago none more blooming.”
“Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite lovely,” said my father. “I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you.”
He took the General’s hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gathered in the old soldier’s eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He said:
“We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me, childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long; but by God’s mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!”
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Carmilla – Summary
Here is the book summary from Goodreads:
Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in the sexual tension between two young women and gothic romance.
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, teenaged Laura leads a solitary life with only her father, attendant and tutor for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest—the beautiful Carmilla.
So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her entrancing new companion, one defined by mysterious happenings and infused with an implicit but undeniable eroticism. As Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day…
Copyright © 1872 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
More details on Goodreads can be found here.
