she bade me good-bye, while the
repressed tears choked her voice. Alas! Charles, it was the last time
that I saw a smile light up that dear face!

"So I departed entirely blinded, and at the commencement of my stay at
M---- I was so completely taken up with the exercise of my profession,
that in the letters from home I only noticed the favourable
particulars; especially as Ellen's frequent accounts of herself, which
almost formed a sort of diary, lulled me into so perfect a security,
that I fancied, the care and anxiety which now and then appeared in her
mother's letters to be only caused by the exaggerated fondness of a
mother's heart.

"My colleague full of respect for my green wisdom, did his best to
interpret every graver symptom in favour of my diagnostics, and so I
lived on, a rose coloured mist blinding my eyes, till the darkest night
suddenly closed around me.

"Ellen's letters which in the later weeks had become rather dispirited
suddenly stopped. In their stead I received a letter from the doctor,
about six months after my departure saying that another consultation
with me seemed to him most desirable. In the last few weeks several
symptoms had suddenly changed, so that he dared not proceed in the
former manner without further orders. My adoptive parents also eagerly
intreated me to come to them.

"But even in spite of all this, I still lingered, certainly not for any
frivolous reason; the life or death of some of my patients, just then,
depending on my stay. At last a telegraphic despatch startled me into
activity. A vomiting of blood had taken place: If you do not come
instantly, wrote her mother, you will not find her alive.

"Late at night I arrived at their house feeling as if I myself were
dying. On that dreadful journey the scales had suddenly fallen from my
eyes, and with the same ingenuity which I had formerly exercised to
confirm my own errors, I now sought out every argument expressly to
torment myself with the conviction that I alone was responsible for the
loss of this much cherished being. I tottered up the well-known stairs.
Her mother met me on the landing, tearless, but with a disturbed look
in her eyes. It seemed almost like a relief to me, when she exclaimed:
'you are too late!'--I had dreaded to meet the eyes of my poor sister,
as a murderer dreads the dying look of his victim. And yet it was more
painful to see the calm face, which reclined on her pillows, smiling,
and free from repr