would certainly still be legible. The very accumulations which Mr.
Playmore deplored would be the means of preserving them from the rain
and the damp. With these modest hints I closed my letter; and thus for
once, thanks to my Continental experience, I was able to instruct my
lawyer!

Another day passed; and I heard nothing of the travelers.

I began to feel anxious. I made my preparations for my journey southward
overnight; and I resolved to start for London the next day--unless I
heard of some change in Mrs. Macallan's traveling arrangements in the
interval.

The post of the next morning decided my course of action. It brought me
a letter from my mother-in-law, which added one more to the memorable
dates in my domestic calendar.

Eustace and his mother had advanced as far as Paris on their homeward
journey, when a cruel disaster had befallen them. The fatigues of
traveling, and the excitement of his anticipated meeting with me, had
proved together to be too much for my husband. He had held out as far as
Paris with the greatest difficulty; and he was now confined to his bed
again, struck down by a relapse. The doctors, this time, had no fear
for his life, provided that his patience would support him through a
lengthened period of the most absolute repose.

"It now rests with you, Valeria," Mrs. Macallan wrote, "to fortify and
comfort Eustace under this new calamity. Do not suppose that he has ever
blamed or thought of blaming you for leaving him with me in Spain,
as soon as he was declared to be out of danger. 'It was _I_ who left
_her,_' he said to me, when we first talked about it; 'and it is my
wife's right to expect that I should go back to her.' Those were his
words, my dear; and he has done all he can to abide by them. Helpless in
his bed, he now asks you to take the will for the deed, and to join him
in Paris. I think I know you well enough, my child, to be sure that you
will do this; and I need only add one word of caution, before I close my
letter. Avoid all reference, not only to the Trial (you will do that of
your own accord), but even to our house at Gleninch. You will understand
how he feels, in his present state of nervous depression, when I tell
you that I should never have ventured on asking you to join him here,
if your letter had not informed me that your visits to Dexter were at
an end. Would you believe it?--his horror of anything which recalls our
past troubles is still so vivid that he has