that lay before me, if he recovered, the
more I felt inclined to despond. The oftener the English physician who
attended on him said to me, "He may get the better of the fever, but
he has a fixed idea, which never leaves him night or day, which has
unsettled his reason, and which will end in killing him, unless you or
some of his friends can remove it"--the oftener I heard this, the more
acutely I felt my own powerlessness, the more I shrank from every idea
that was connected with the hopeless future.

I had only expected to receive my answer from Wincot in the shape of a
letter. It was consequently a great surprise, as well as a great relief,
to be informed one day that two gentlemen wished to speak with me, and
to find that of these two gentlemen the first was the old priest, and
the second a male relative of Mrs. Elmslie.

Just before their arrival the fever symptoms had disappeared, and Alfred
had been pronounced out of danger. Both the priest and his companion
were eager to know when the sufferer would be strong enough to travel.
The y had come to Cartagena expressly to take him home with them, and
felt far more hopeful than I did of the restorative effects of his
native air. After all the questions connected with the first important
point of the journey to England had been asked and answered, I ventured
to make some inquiries after Miss Elmslie. Her relative informed me that
she was suffering both in body and in mind from excess of anxiety
on Alfred's account. They had been obliged to deceive her as to the
dangerous nature of his illness in order to deter her from accompanying
the priest and her relation on their mission to Spain.

Slowly and imperfectly, as the weeks wore on, Alfred regained something
of his former physical strength, but no alteration appeared in his
illness as it affected his mind.

From the very first day of his advance toward recovery, it had been
discovered that the brain fever had exercised the strangest influence
over his faculties of memory. All recollection of recent events was gone
from him. Everything connected with Naples, with me, with his journey
to Italy, had dropped in some mysterious manner entirely out of his
remembrance. So completely had all late circumstances passed from his
memory that, though he recognized the old priest and his own servant
easily on the first days of his convalescence, he never recognized me,
but regarded me with such a wistful, doubting expression, tha