unbending spirit with which she was contending would yield at last.

At length the tidings came to her that Essex, worn out with agitation
and suffering, was seriously sick. The historians doubt whether his
sickness was real or feigned; but there is not much difficulty in
understanding, from the circumstances of the case, what its real nature
was. Such mental conflicts as those which he endured suspend the powers
of digestion and accelerate the pulsations of the heart, which beats in
the bosom with a preternatural frequency and force, like a bird
fluttering to get free from a snare. The result is a sort of fever
burning slowly in the veins, and an emaciation which wastes the strength
away, and, in impetuous and uncontrollable spirits, like that of Essex,
sometimes exhausts the powers of life altogether. The sickness,
therefore, though of mental origin, becomes bodily and real; but then
the sufferer is often ready, in such cases, to add a little to it by
feigning. An instinct teaches him that nothing is so likely to move the
heart whose cruelty causes him to suffer, as a knowledge of the extreme
to which it has reduced him. Essex was doubtless willing that Elizabeth
should know that he was sick. Her knowing it had, in some measure, the
usual effect. It reawakened and strengthened the love she had felt for
him, but did not give it absolutely the victory. She sent _eight_
physicians to him, to examine and consult upon his case. She caused some
broth to be made for him, and gave it to one of these physicians to
carry to him, directing the messenger, in a faltering voice, to say to
Essex that if it were proper to do so she would have come to see him
herself. She then turned away to hide her tears. Strange inconsistency
of the human heart--resentment and anger holding their ground in the
soul against the object of such deep and unconquerable love. It would be
incredible, were it not that probably every single one of all the
thousands who may read this story has experienced the same.

Nothing has so great an effect in awakening in the heart a strong
sentiment of kindness as the performance of a kind act. Feeling
originates and controls action, it is true, but then, on the other hand,
action has a prodigious power in modifying feeling. Elizabeth's acts of
kindness to Essex in his sickness produced a renewal of her tenderness
for him so strong that her obstinacy and anger gave way before it, and
she soon began to desire some mo