odily and of a nervo-febrile cast.

The Reverend Henry Lambent's attack came on with the visible appearance
of a face before his eyes. If he sat down to read, it gazed up at him
from the book, like a beautiful illustration that filled every page. He
turned over, and it was there; he turned over again, and it was still
there. Leaf after leaf did he keep turning, and it was always before
him.

He set to work at his next week's sermons, and the manuscript paper
became illustrated as well with the same sweet pensive face, and when he
read prayers morning and evening, it seemed to him that he was making
supplication for that face alone. He preached on Sundays, and the
congregation seemed to consist of one--the owner of that face, and to
her he addressed himself morning and afternoon. If he sat and thought
it was of that face; if he went out for a constitutional, that face was
with him; and when at least a dozen times he set off, as he felt in duty
bound, to visit the schools, he turned off in another direction--he
dared not go for fear of meeting the owner of that face.

At meal-times, when he ate but little, it seemed to be that face that
was opposite to him, instead of the thin, handsome features of his
sister Rebecca; and if he turned his gaze to the right there was the
face again instead of the pale, refined, high-bred Beatrice. He went to
bed, and lay turning from side to side, with that countenance
photographed upon his brain, and when at last toward morning he fell
asleep, it was to dream always of that pensive countenance.

The Reverend Henry Lambent grew alarmed. He could not understand it.
He had never given much thought to such a matter as marriage on his own
account. He knew that people were married, because he had joined them
together scores of times, and he knew that generally people were
well-dressed, looked very weak and foolish, and that the bride shed
tears and wrote her name worse than ever she had written it before. But
that had nothing to do with him. He stood on a cold, stony pedestal,
which raised him high above such human weaknesses--weaknesses that
belonged to his people, not to him.

At last he told himself that it was his duty to resist temptation, and
that by resistance it would be overcome. He realised that his ailment
was really mental, and after severe examination determined to quell it
by bold endeavour, for the more he fled from the cause the worse he
seemed to be. It was abs