m me; and, leaning my head on my
hands, I let all the waves of that sorrowful memory flow over me.

How strong they were! how persistent! I could hear the tones of her
languid voice, and see the light lingering to the last in her dim eyes,
whenever they met mine. A shudder crept through me as I recollected how
she travelled that dolorous road, slowly, day by day, down to the grave.
Other feet were beginning to tread the same painful journey; but there
was yet time to stay them, and the power to do it was intrusted to me.
What was I to do with my power?

It seemed cruel that this power should come to me from my mother's
death. If she were living still, or if she had died from any other
cause, the discovery of this remedy would never have been made by me.
And I was to take it as a sort of miraculous gift, purchased by her
pangs, and bestow it upon the only man I hated. For I hated him; I said
so to myself, muttering the words between my teeth.

What was the value of his life, that I should ransom it by such a
sacrifice? A mean, selfish, dissipated life--a life that would be
Olivia's curse as long as it lasted. For an instant a vision stood out
clear before me, and made my heart beat fast, of Olivia free, as she
must be in the space of a few months, should I leave the disease to take
its course; free and happy, disenthralled from the most galling of all
bondage. Could I not win her then? She knew already that I loved her;
would she not soon learn to love me in return? If Olivia were living,
what an irreparable injury it would be to her for this man to recover!

That seemed to settle the question. I could not be the one to doom her
to a continuation of the misery she was enduring. It was irrational and
over-scrupulous of my conscience to demand such a thing from me. I would
use all the means practised in the ordinary course of treatment to
render the recovery of my patient possible, and so fulfil my duty. I
would carefully follow all Dr. Senior's suggestions. He was an
experienced and very skilful physician; I could not do better than
submit my judgment to his.

Besides, how did I know that this fancied discovery of mine was of the
least value? I had never had a chance of making experiment of it, and no
doubt it was an idle chimera of my brain, when it was overwrought by
anxiety for my mother's sake. I had not hitherto thought enough of it to
ask the opinion of any of my medical friends and colleagues. Why should
I att