d
unutterably sad. The Death of the year overhung the Death of man. And as
Philip bent over the tomb, within and without all was ICE and NIGHT!

For hours he remained on that spot, alone with his grief and absorbed in
his prayer. Long past midnight Fanny heard his step on the stairs, and
the door of his chamber close with unwonted violence. She heard, too,
for some time, his heavy tread on the floor, till suddenly all was
silent. The next morning, when, at the usual hour, Sarah entered to
unclose the shutters and light the fire, she was startled by wild
exclamations and wilder laughter. The fever had mounted to the brain--he
was delirious.

For several weeks Philip Beaufort was in imminent danger; for a
considerable part of that time he was unconscious; and when the peril
was past, his recovery was slow and gradual. It was the only illness
to which his vigorous frame had ever been subjected: and the fever
had perhaps exhausted him more than it might have done one in whose
constitution the disease had encountered less resistance. His brother;
imagining he had gone abroad, was unacquainted with his danger. None
tended his sick-bed save the hireling nurse, the feed physician, and the
unpurchasable heart of the only being to whom the wealth and rank of the
Heir of Beaufort Court were as nothing. Here was reserved for him Fate's
crowning lesson, in the vanity of those human wishes which anchor in
gold and power. For how many years had the exile and the outcast pined
indignantly for his birthright?--Lo! it was won: and with it came the
crushed heart and the smitten frame. As he slowly recovered sense and
reasoning, these thoughts struck him forcibly. He felt as if he were
rightly punished in having disdained, during his earlier youth,
the enjoyments within his reach. Was there nothing in the glorious
health--the unconquerable hope--the heart, if wrung, and chafed, and
sorely tried, free at least from the direst anguish of the passions,
disappointed and jealous love? Though now certain, if spared to the
future, to be rich, powerful, righted in name and honour, might he not
from that sick-bed envy his earlier past? even when with his brother
orphan he wandered through the solitary fields, and felt with what
energies we are gifted when we have something to protect; or when,
loving and beloved, he saw life smile out to him in the eyes of Eugenie;
or when, after that melancholy loss, he wrestled boldly, and breast to
breast with