She sometimes makes romantic advances towards Laura. Laura comments that this information seems needless to say, and her father laughs it off.Ĭarmilla and Laura grow to be very close friends, but occasionally Carmilla's mood abruptly changes. Before she leaves, she sternly notes that her daughter will not disclose any information whatsoever about her family, past, or herself, and that Carmilla is of sound mind. She arranges to leave her daughter with Laura and her father until she can return in three months. Both girls instantly recognise each other from the "dream" they both had when they were young.Ĭarmilla appears injured after her carriage accident, but her mysterious mother informs Laura's father that her journey is urgent and cannot be delayed. A carriage accident outside Laura's home unexpectedly brings a girl of Laura's age into the family's care. Laura, saddened by the loss of a potential friend, longs for a companion. The general ambiguously concludes that he will discuss the circumstances in detail when they meet later. The general was supposed to bring his niece, Bertha Rheinfeldt, to visit the two, but the niece suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Twelve years later, Laura and her father are admiring the sunset in front of the castle when her father tells her of a letter from his friend, General Spielsdorf. She later claims to have been punctured in her breast, although no wound was found. When she was six, Laura had a vision of a very beautiful visitor in her bedchamber. Laura, the teenaged protagonist, narrates, beginning with her childhood in a "picturesque and solitary" castle amid an extensive forest in Styria, where she lives with her father, a wealthy English widower retired from service to the Austrian Empire. Hesselius, whose departures from medical orthodoxy rank him as the first occult detective in literature. Le Fanu presents the story as part of the casebook of Dr. Isabella Mazzanti illustrated the book's 2014 edition, published by Editions Soleil and translated by Gaid Girard.
Consequently, confusion has arisen relating the pictures to the plot.
Comparing the work of two illustrators to the story, David Henry Friston, and Michael Fitzgerald, whose work appears in the magazine article, but not in modern printings of the book, reveals inconsistencies in the characters' depictions. Carmilla, serialised in the literary magazine The Dark Blue in late 1871 and early 1872, was reprinted in Le Fanu's short-story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872).
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