f. 'Where is Florence?' 'I am
here, Papa, I am here.' 'I don't know her!' he would cry. 'We have been
parted so long, that I don't know her!' and then a staring dread would
be upon him, until she could soothe his perturbation; and recall the
tears she tried so hard, at other times, to dry.

He rambled through the scenes of his old pursuits--through many where
Florence lost him as she listened--sometimes for hours. He would repeat
that childish question, 'What is money?' and ponder on it, and think
about it, and reason with himself, more or less connectedly, for a good
answer; as if it had never been proposed to him until that moment. He
would go on with a musing repetition of the title of his old firm twenty
thousand times, and at every one of them, would turn his head upon his
pillow. He would count his children--one--two--stop, and go back, and
begin again in the same way.

But this was when his mind was in its most distracted state. In all the
other phases of its illness, and in those to which it was most constant,
it always turned on Florence. What he would oftenest do was this: he
would recall that night he had so recently remembered, the night on
which she came down to his room, and would imagine that his heart smote
him, and that he went out after her, and up the stairs to seek her.
Then, confounding that time with the later days of the many footsteps,
he would be amazed at their number, and begin to count them as he
followed her. Here, of a sudden, was a bloody footstep going on among
the others; and after it there began to be, at intervals, doors standing
open, through which certain terrible pictures were seen, in mirrors,
of haggard men, concealing something in their breasts. Still, among the
many footsteps and the bloody footsteps here and there, was the step of
Florence. Still she was going on before. Still the restless mind went,
following and counting, ever farther, ever higher, as to the summit of a
mighty tower that it took years to climb.

One day he inquired if that were not Susan who had spoken a long while
ago.

Florence said 'Yes, dear Papa;' and asked him would he like to see her?

He said 'very much.' And Susan, with no little trepidation, showed
herself at his bedside.

It seemed a great relief to him. He begged her not to go; to understand
that he forgave her what she had said; and that she was to stay.
Florence and he were very different now, he said, and very happy. Let
her look at this