ut golden and bright, like the
Contes-sina's. And as suddenly all changed, and there stood the
Contessina herself, with one hand pressed to her eyes, and she was
weeping, and Gerald felt--but how he did not know--he had offended her;
and he trembled at his fault and hated himself, and, stooping down, he
fell at last at her feet, and sobbed for pardon.

And there he lay, and there night found him sleeping--the long sleep
that awakes to fever. Damp mists arose, charged with all the deadly
vapours of the spot; foul airs steamed from the hot earth, to mingle
with his blood, and thicken and corrupt it. Though the sky was
freckled with stars, their light was dimmed by the dull atmosphere that
prevailed, for the place was pestilential and deadly.

When day broke racking pains tortured him in every limb, and his head
felt as though splitting with every throb of its arteries. A dreadful
thirst, almost maddening in its craving, was on him, and though a
rivulet rippled close by, he could not crawl to it; and now the hot
sun beamed down upon him, and the piercing rays darted into his brain,
penetrating it in all directions--sending wild fancies, horrible and
ghastly visions, through his mind. And combats with wild beasts, and
wounds, and suffering, and long days of agony and suspense, all came
pouring in upon him, as vial after vial of misery bathed his poor,
distracted intellect.

Three days of this half-conscious state--like so many long years of
suffering they were--and then he sank into the low torpor that forms the
last stage of the fever. It was thus, insensible and dying, a traveller
found him, as the third evening was falling. The stranger stooped down
to examine the almost lifeless figure, and it was long before he could
convince himself that vitality yet lingered there: from the dried and
livid lips no breath seemed to issue; the limbs fell heavily to
either side as they were moved; and it was only after a most careful
examination that he could detect a faint fluttering motion of the heart.

Whether it was that the case presented so little of hope, or that he was
one not much given to movements of charity, but the traveller, after all
these investigations, turned again to pursue his path. He had not gone
far, however, when, gaining the rise of a hill, he cast his eyes back
over the dreary landscape, and again they fell upon that small mound of
human clay beside the lake. Moved by an impulse that, even to himself,
was