.

[Footnote 3: I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that
reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared
with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in
which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and
obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to
discourage any ordinary taste for literature.]

CHAPTER XVI.

Next morning I rose somewhat before the breakfast hour. As I descended
the stairs, Edith stepped into the hall from the room which had been
the scene of the morning interview between us described some chapters
back.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, with a charmingly arch expression, "you thought
to slip out unbeknown for another of those solitary morning rambles
which have such nice effects on you. But you see I am up too early for
you this time. You are fairly caught."

"You discredit the efficacy of your own cure," I said, "by supposing
that such a ramble would now be attended with bad consequences."

"I am very glad to hear that," she said. "I was in here arranging some
flowers for the breakfast table when I heard you come down, and
fancied I detected something surreptitious in your step on the
stairs."

"You did me injustice," I replied. "I had no idea of going out at
all."

Despite her effort to convey an impression that my interception was
purely accidental, I had at the time a dim suspicion of what I
afterwards learned to be the fact, namely, that this sweet creature,
in pursuance of her self-assumed guardianship over me, had risen for
the last two or three mornings at an unheard-of hour, to insure
against the possibility of my wandering off alone in case I should be
affected as on the former occasion. Receiving permission to assist her
in making up the breakfast bouquet, I followed her into the room from
which she had emerged.

"Are you sure," she asked, "that you are quite done with those
terrible sensations you had that morning?"

"I can't say that I do not have times of feeling decidedly queer," I
replied, "moments when my personal identity seems an open question. It
would be too much to expect after my experience that I should not have
such sensations occasionally, but as for being carried entirely off my
feet, as I was on the point of being that morning, I think the danger
is past."

"I shall never forget how you looked that morning," she said.

"If you had merely saved my life," I continued,