t I felt
inexpressibly pained when I approached his bedside. All his questions
were about Miss Elmslie and Wincot Abbey, and all his talk referred to
the period when his father was yet alive.

The doctors augured good rather than ill from this loss of memory of
recent incidents, saying that it would turn out to be temporary, and
that it answered the first great healing purpose of keeping his mind at
ease. I tried to believe them--tried to feel as sanguine, when the day
came for his departure, as the old friends felt who were taking him
home. But the effort was too much for me. A foreboding that I should
never see him again oppressed my heart, and the tears came into my eyes
as I saw the worn figure of my poor friend half helped, half lifted into
the traveling-carriage, and borne away gently on the road toward home.

He had never recognized me, and the doctors had begged that I would give
him, for some time to come, as few opportunities as possible of doing
so. But for this request I should have accompanied him to England. As it
was, nothing better remained for me to do than to change the scene, and
recruit as I best could my energies of body and mind, depressed of late
by much watching and anxiety. The famous cities of Spain were not new to
me, but I visited them again and revived old impressions of the Alhambra
and Madrid. Once or twice I thought of making a pilgrimage to the East,
but late events had sobered and altered me. That yearning, unsatisfied
feeling which we call "homesickness" began to prey upon my heart, and I
resolved to return to England.

I went back by way of Paris, having settled with the priest that he
should write to me at my banker's there as soon as he could after Alfred
had returned to Wincot. If I had gone to the East, the letter would have
been forwarded to me. I wrote to prevent this; and, on my arrival at
Paris, stopped at the banker's before I went to my hotel.

The moment the letter was put into my hands, the black border on the
envelope told me the worst. He was dead.

There was but one consolation--he had died calmly, almost happily,
without once referring to those fatal chances which had wrought the
fulfillment of the ancient prophecy. "My beloved pupil," the old priest
wrote, "seemed to rally a little the first few days after his return,
but he gained no real strength, and soon suffered a slight relapse
of fever. After this he sank gradually and gently day by day, and so
departed fr