"We sat down on a rude bench under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan horizon and the stream that flows beside our home and passes under the steep old bridge I have mentioned wound through many a group of noble trees almost at our feet reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky. General Spielsdorf 's letter was so extraordinary so vehement and in some places so self- contradictory that I read it twice over--the second time aloud to my father--and was still unable to account for it except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind. It said "I have lost my darling daughter for as such I loved her. During the last days of dear Bertha's illness I was not able to write to you."