smile still lingering on her mouth. She saw
nothing, and no one; for John had pulled me from the window, and placed
himself out of sight. So, turning back again, she went on her way.
They both disappeared.

"Now, Phineas, it is all ended."

"What do you mean?"

"I have looked on her for the last time."

"Nay--she is not going yet."

"But I am--fleeing from the devil and his angels. Hurrah, Phineas,
lad! We'll have a merry night. To-morrow I am away to Bristol, to set
sail for America."

He wrung my hands with a long, loud, half-mad laugh; and then dropped
heavily on a chair.

A few hours after, he was lying on my bed, struck down by the first
real sickness he had ever known. It was apparently a low agueish
fever, which had been much about Norton Bury since the famine of last
year. At least, so Jael said; and she was a wise doctoress, and had
cured many. He would have no one else to attend him--seemed terrified
at the mere mention of Dr. Jessop. I opposed him not at first, for
well I knew, whatever the proximate cause of his sickness might be, its
root was in that mental pang which no doctors could cure. So I trusted
to the blessed quiet of a sick-room--often so healing to misery--to
Jael's nursing, and his brother's love.

After a few days we called in a physician--a stranger from Coltham--who
pronounced it to be this Norton Bury fever, caught through living, as
he still persisted in doing, in his old attic, in that unhealthy alley
where was Sally Watkins's house. It must have been coming on, the
doctor said, for a long time; but it had no doubt now reached its
crisis. He would be better soon.

But he did not get better. Days slid into weeks, and still he lay
there, never complaining, scarcely appearing to suffer, except from the
wasting of the fever; yet when I spoke of recovery he "turned his face
unto the wall"--weary of living.

Once, when he had lain thus a whole morning, hardly speaking a word, I
began to feel growing palpable the truth which day by day I had thrust
behind me as some intangible, impossible dread--that ere now people had
died of mere soul-sickness, without any bodily disease. I took up his
poor hand that lay on the counterpane;--once, at Enderley, he had
regretted its somewhat coarse strength: now Ursula's own was not
thinner or whiter. He drew it back.

"Oh, Phineas, lad, don't touch me--only let me rest."

The weak, querulous voice--that awful longing for rest! Wha