the
mother lavished upon her. Night, however, brought no rest to Venetia;
and the next day, her state appeared so alarming to Lady Annabel, that
she would have instantly summoned medical assistance, had it not been
for Venetia's strong objections. 'Indeed, dear mother,' she said,
'it is not physicians that I require. They cannot cure me. Let me be
quiet.'

The same cause, indeed, which during the last five years had at
intervals so seriously menaced the existence of this unhappy girl, was
now at work with renovated and even irresistible influence. Her frame
could no longer endure the fatal action of her over-excited nerves.
Her first illness, however alarming, had been baffled by time, skill,
and principally by the vigour of an extremely youthful frame, then a
stranger to any serious indisposition. At a later period, the change
of life induced by their residence at Weymouth had permitted her again
to rally. She had quitted England with renewed symptoms of her former
attack, but a still more powerful change, not only of scene, but of
climate and country, and the regular and peaceful life she had led on
the Lago Maggiore, had again reassured the mind of her anxious mother.
This last adventure at Rovigo, however, prostrated her. The strange
surprise, the violent development of feeling, the agonising doubts and
hopes, the terrible suspense the profound and bitter and overwhelming
disappointment, all combined to shake her mind to its very
foundations. She felt for the first time, that she could no longer
bear up against the torture of her singular position. Her energy was
entirely exhausted; she was no longer capable of making the slightest
exertion; she took refuge in that torpid resignation that results from
utter hopelessness.

Lying on her sofa with her eyes fixed in listless abstraction, the
scene at Rovigo flitted unceasingly before her languid vision. At
length she had seen that father, that unknown and mysterious father,
whose idea had haunted her infancy as if by inspiration; to gain
the slightest knowledge of whom had cost her many long and acute
suffering; and round whose image for so many years every thought of
her intelligence, and every feeling of her heart, had clustered like
spirits round some dim and mystical altar, At length she had beheld
him; she had gazed on that spiritual countenance; she had listened to
the tender accents of that musical voice; within his arms she had been
folded with rapture, and p