ot yet; I'm in a
pretty fix."

As the twilight gathered in the room he lay, listening while his mother
and Alice talked together, some times of him, sometimes of Colonel
Tiffton, whose embarrassments were now generally known, and again of
'Lina, who, he heard, had chosen to remain at Saratoga, where she was
enjoying herself so much with dear Mrs. Richards.

It was Alice who sat up that night, and Hugh, as he lay watching her
with half-closed eyes, as in her loose plain wrapper, with her luxuriant
curls, coiled in a large square knot at the back of her head, she moved
noiselessly around the room, felt a pang of remorse at his own
duplicity, one moment resolving to give up the part he was playing and
bid her leave him alone, and seek the rest she needed. But the
temptation to keep her there was strong. He would be very quiet, he said
to himself, and he kept his word, remaining so still and apparently
sleeping so soundly, that Alice lay down upon the lounge on the opposite
side of the room, where she had lain many a night, but never as now,
with Hugh's eyes upon her, watching her so eagerly as she fell away to
sleep, her soft, regular, childlike breathing awaking a thrill in Hugh's
heart, and sending the blood in little, tingling throbs through every
vein.

The drops and powders on the table remained undisturbed that night, for
the patient was too quiet, and the watcher was so tired, that the latter
never woke until the daylight was breaking, and Adah came to relieve
her. With a frightened start she arose, astonished to find it was
morning.

"I wonder if he had suffered from my neglect?" she said, stealing up to
Hugh, who had schooled himself to meet her gaze with wide, open eyes,
which certainly had in them no delirium, and which puzzled Alice
somewhat, making her blush and turn away.

The old doctor, too, was puzzled, when, later in the morning, he came
in, feeling his patient's pulse, examining his tongue, and pronouncing
him decidedly out of danger. The fever had left him, he said--the crisis
was past--Hugh was a heap better, and for his part he could not
understand why the mind should not also come clear, or what it was which
made his hitherto talkative subject so silent. He never had such a
case--he didn't believe his books had one on record; and the befogged
old man hurried home to see if, in all his musty volumes, unopened for
many a year, there was a parallel case to Hugh Worthington's.

CHAPTER XXII