Carmilla's reappearance in her room

Carmilla's reappearance in her room, after a night of frantic searching, resolves the immediate mystery of her disappearance but deepens the enigma surrounding her nature, as she offers an implausible sleepwalking explanation that Laura's father accepts while Laura herself remains unsettled.

The Discovery and Joyful Reunion

At one o'clock in the afternoon, after a morning passed in alarm and excitement, Laura ran up to Carmilla's room and found her standing at her dressing table. Laura was astounded and could not believe her eyes. Carmilla beckoned to her with her pretty finger in silence, her face expressing extreme fear. Laura ran to her in an ecstasy of joy, kissing and embracing her again and again, then ran to the bell and rang it vehemently to bring others to the spot who might at once relieve her father's anxiety. Laura exclaimed, "Dear Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We have been in agonies of anxiety about you. Where have you been? How did you come back?" Carmilla replied, "Last night has been a night of wonders." Laura begged her to explain all she could.

Carmilla's Account of the Night

Carmilla said that it was past two o'clock when she went to sleep as usual in her bed, with her doors locked—both that of the dressing room and that opening upon the gallery. Her sleep was uninterrupted and, so far as she knew, dreamless. But she woke just now on the sofa in the dressing room, and found the door between the rooms open and the other door forced. She expressed bewilderment: "How could all this have happened without my being wakened? It must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily wakened; and how could I have been carried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir startles?" By this time, Madame Perrodon, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, Laura's father, and a number of servants had entered the room. Carmilla was overwhelmed with inquiries, congratulations, and welcomes. She had but one story to tell and seemed the least able of all the party to suggest any way of accounting for what had happened.

Laura's Father's Sleepwalking Theory

Laura's father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. Laura saw Carmilla's eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance. After sending the servants away, with only Madame Perrodon and Laura remaining in the room with Carmilla, he came to her thoughtfully, took her hand very kindly, led her to the sofa, and sat down beside her. He asked her forgiveness for risking a conjecture and a question. Carmilla replied, "Who can have a better right? Ask what you please, and I will tell you everything. But my story is simply one of bewilderment and darkness. I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you please, but you know, of course, the limitations mamma has placed me under." Laura's father acknowledged the limitations and then proposed his theory: that Carmilla had walked in her sleep, gotten up, unlocked the door, taken the key out and locked it on the outside, then carried the key away with her to some other room in the old house. He asked if she had ever been suspected of walking in her sleep. Carmilla answered, "Never, since I was very young indeed." When pressed, she admitted, "Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my old nurse." Laura's father smiled and nodded, elaborating his theory: she got up in her sleep, unlocked the door, not leaving the key in the lock but taking it out and locking it on the outside, then carried the key away to some one of the five-and-twenty rooms on that floor or elsewhere. He argued that the old house, with its many rooms, closets, heavy furniture, and accumulations of lumber, would require a week to search thoroughly. Laura objected, asking how her father accounted for Carmilla finding herself on the sofa in the dressing room, which they had searched so carefully. He replied that she came there after they had searched it, still in her sleep, and at last awoke spontaneously, as much surprised to find herself where she was as anyone else. He declared, "I wish all mysteries were as easily and innocently explained as yours, Carmilla. And so we may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation of the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no burglars, or poisoners, or witches—nothing that need alarm Carmilla, or anyone else, for our safety."

The Aftermath and Lingering Unease

Carmilla was looking charmingly, her beauty enhanced by that graceful languor peculiar to her. Laura's father silently contrasted her looks with Laura's and sighed, saying, "I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself." So the alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to her friends. Yet the explanation, though accepted by Laura's father, left the deeper mystery untouched. The locked doors, the forced entrance, the absence of any disturbance in the room—all pointed to something beyond ordinary sleepwalking. Laura's own dream-attack that same night, in which she saw Carmilla bathed in blood, remained unspoken, a private horror that the sleepwalking theory could not address. The sly, dark glance Laura had seen Carmilla cast at her father suggested a consciousness that belied her professed bewilderment. The event thus served to temporarily restore domestic order while planting the seeds of a more profound unease that would only be resolved in the chapel at Karnstein.