e so unexpectedly, and in a
moment was gone.

Oct. 6.--She certainly is better, and even when she found that Charles
had been suddenly obliged to leave, she received the news quite
cheerfully. The doctor says that her apparent improvement may be
delusive; but I think our impressing upon her the necessity of keeping
what has occurred a secret from papa, and everybody, helps to give her a
zest for life.

Oct. 8.--She is still mending. I am glad to have saved her--my only
sister--if I have done so; though I shall now never become Charles's
wife.

CHAPTER VII.--A SURPRISE AWAITS HER

Feb. 5.--Writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but I
now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line.
Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very
engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid. But a fearful complication of
affairs attends it!

O what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!

Charles has written reproachfully to me from Venice, where he is. He
says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the
counterfeit, while he still loves me? Yet how, on the other hand, can he
leave it unfulfilled? All this time I have not told her, and up to this
minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for better, for worse,
till death them do part. It is a harassing position for me, and all
three. In the awful approach of death, one's judgment loses its balance,
and we do anything to meet the exigencies of the moment, with a single
eye to the one who excites our sympathy, and from whom we seem on the
brink of being separated for ever.

Had he really married her at that time all would be settled now. But he
took too much thought; she might have died, and then he had his reason.
If indeed it had turned out so, I should now be perhaps a sad woman; but
not a tempest-tossed one . . . The possibility of his claiming me after
all is what lies at the root of my agitation. Everything hangs by a
thread. Suppose I tell her the marriage was a mockery; suppose she is
indignant with me and with him for the deception--and then? Otherwise,
suppose she is not indignant but forgives all; he is bound to marry her;
and honour constrains me to urge him thereto, in spite of what he
protests, and to smooth the way to this issue by my method of informing
her. I have meant to tell her the last month--ever since she has been
strong enough to bear such tidings;