taining
her consent to the proposal. Helen at Laughton! Oh, blissful thought!"

"And in what air would she be so likely to revive?" said Varney; but his
voice was thick and husky.

The ideas thus presented to him almost banished anxiety from Percival's
breast. In a thousand delightful shapes they haunted him during the
sleepless night; and when, the next morning, he found that Helen was
surprisingly better, he pressed his invitation upon Madame Dalibard with
a warmth that made her cheek yet more pale, and the hand, which the boy
grasped as he pleaded, as cold as the dead. But she briefly consented,
and Percival, allowed a brief interview with Helen, had the rapture
to see her smile in a delight as childlike as his own at the news he
communicated, and listen with swimming eye when he dwelt on the walks
they should take together amidst haunts to become henceforth dear to her
as to himself. Fairyland dawned before them.

The visit of the physician justified Percival's heightened spirits. All
the acuter symptoms had vanished already. He sanctioned his patient's
departure from town as soon as Madame Dalibard's convenience would
permit, and recommended only a course of restorative medicines to
strengthen the nervous system, which was to commence with the following
morning, and be persisted in for some weeks. He dwelt much on the effect
to be derived from taking these medicines the first thing in the day, as
soon as Helen woke. Varney and Madame Dalibard exchanged a rapid glance.
Charmed with the success that in this instance had attended the skill
of the great physician, Percival, in his usual zealous benevolence, now
eagerly pressed upon Madame Dalibard the wisdom of consulting Dr.
---- for her own malady; and the doctor, putting on his spectacles and
drawing his chair nearer to the frowning cripple, began to question her
of her state. But Madame Dalibard abruptly and discourteously put a stop
to all interrogatories: she had already exhausted all remedies art could
suggest; she had become reconciled to her deplorable infirmity, and lost
all faith in physicians. Some day or other she might try the baths at
Egra, but till then she must be permitted to suffer undisturbed.

The doctor, by no means wishing to undertake a case of chronic
paralysis, rose smilingly, and with a liberal confession that the German
baths were sometimes extremely efficacious in such complaints, pressed
Percival's outstretched hand, then slipped his ow