mentally. It is not
for myself, or on my own behalf,' continued the stranger, 'that I come to
you. If I laboured under bodily disease, I should not be out, alone, at
such an hour, or on such a night as this; and if I were afflicted with
it, twenty-four hours hence, God knows how gladly I would lie down and
pray to die. It is for another that I beseech your aid, sir. I may be
mad to ask it for him--I think I am; but, night after night, through the
long dreary hours of watching and weeping, the thought has been ever
present to my mind; and though even _I_ see the hopelessness of human
assistance availing him, the bare thought of laying him in his grave
without it makes my blood run cold!' And a shudder, such as the surgeon
well knew art could not produce, trembled through the speaker's frame.

There was a desperate earnestness in this woman's manner, that went to
the young man's heart. He was young in his profession, and had not yet
witnessed enough of the miseries which are daily presented before the
eyes of its members, to have grown comparatively callous to human
suffering.

'If,' he said, rising hastily, 'the person of whom you speak, be in so
hopeless a condition as you describe, not a moment is to be lost. I will
go with you instantly. Why did you not obtain medical advice before?'

'Because it would have been useless before--because it is useless even
now,' replied the woman, clasping her hands passionately.

The surgeon gazed, for a moment, on the black veil, as if to ascertain
the expression of the features beneath it: its thickness, however,
rendered such a result impossible.

'You _are_ ill,' he said, gently, 'although you do not know it. The
fever which has enabled you to bear, without feeling it, the fatigue you
have evidently undergone, is burning within you now. Put that to your
lips,' he continued, pouring out a glass of water--'compose yourself for
a few moments, and then tell me, as calmly as you can, what the disease
of the patient is, and how long he has been ill. When I know what it is
necessary I should know, to render my visit serviceable to him, I am
ready to accompany you.'

The stranger lifted the glass of water to her mouth, without raising the
veil; put it down again untasted; and burst into tears.

'I know,' she said, sobbing aloud, 'that what I say to you now, seems
like the ravings of fever. I have been told so before, less kindly than
by you. I am not a young woman; and