nce, she walked into the room where Henry
was, and sat down quietly to her work at a small distance from
him. She saw by his eye and his countenance that he was
struggling with the delirious fever which was coming upon him;
and while she kept her hand near the bell, which at an
instant's notice was to be answered, and her eye upon the
avenue through which she could see the doctor arrive, she
spoke now and then in a quiet tone, and gently and firmly
answered the wild questions he addressed to her. Once he
called loudly and fiercely for music; he muttered something
about David and his harp; he bade her drive the evil spirit
from him; he began to speak rapidly and incoherently, and to
chafe at her silence. She could not play; she had never sung
to him before; for the first time, she did. Her voice was
pure, and sweet, and loud; it rose in the silence of that
twilight hour with a strange and awful harmony. She sang the
airs of those sacred chaunts which fall on the ear like
dreamings of eternity. Two old servants who were in the
outward room fell on their knees and listened. For more than
an hour that solemn, mournful song continued; it thrilled
through their very souls, and affected them more deeply than
the most passionate cries of grief or of terror could have
done. It only ceased when the doctor arrived; and Henry was
persuaded, in a moment of gloomy and indifferent abstraction,
to retire to bed, and yield himself to his care. But no
remedies, no treatment availed to check the progress of the
fever, which increased every hour, and which was accompanied
by the fiercest delirium, and the most frantic ravings. His
struggles were fearful: his attempts at self-destruction
frequent; three men could hardly hold him down. Towards
morning, in one of those paroxysms of delirious fury, he broke
a blood-vessel, and Alice, who had never left his bed-side,
was covered with blood. She stirred not even then; she saw in
the doctor's face that the danger was imminent; for the
prostration of strength which followed the accident was sudden
and awful; and one of those indescribable changes which
announce the approach of dissolution was apparent. She
whispered to one of the servants to send for the clergyman,
and then she knelt by the bed-side and gazed with an agonising
intensity on Henry's deathly pale face. His eyes were closed
in the helplessness of utter exhaustion, and his breath hardly
dimmed the mirror that was held to his lips.