er.

The doctor came, but pronounced his patient no better, and threw out a
hint that he had some fears the fever was taking the form of typhus;
adding a warning in regard to the danger of infection. That intelligence
had no influence upon Gaston, who resolved to pass as many hours as
possible with his friend. Nor did it affect Ronald Walton, when he
returned and heard the physician's verdict.

The two young men for the next four days alternately shared the duties
of the holy "sister."

The postal arrangements between Paris and Rennes chanced, at that
moment, to be very imperfect; the letter of Dr. Dupont never reached its
destination, and that of M. de Bois was delayed on its route. It was not
until the fifth day after it was posted that Count Tristan, who obeyed
the summons with all haste, arrived in Paris. His son had never once
evinced sufficient consciousness to recognize Gaston de Bois, but, the
instant the count was ushered into the room, was seized with a fit of
frenzy, and broke forth in a torrent of reproaches, upbraided his father
with the ruin and death of Madeleine, charged him with having wrought
the destruction of his own son, and warned him that he had brought utter
desolation upon his ancestral home.

Dr. Dupont, who entered the room during this paroxysm, suggested to the
count the propriety of withdrawing. The latter, although every word
Maurice uttered inflicted a deadly pang, could not, at first, be induced
to tear himself away. The doctor was resolute in pronouncing his
sentence of banishment, and declared that the viscount's life might be
the sacrifice if he were subjected to further excitement.

We will not attempt to portray the poignant sufferings of the count,
who, in spite of his wiliness and worldliness, was passionately attached
to his only child,--the central axis upon which all his hopes, his
schemes, his whole world moved.

Several times, while the invalid was sleeping, his father ventured to
steal into the chamber; but, by some strange species of magnetism, his
very sphere seemed to affect the slumberer, who invariably awoke, and
recognized, or partially recognized him, and burst out anew in violent
denunciations, to which respect would never have allowed him to give
utterance, except under the stimulus of delirium. The count writhed and
shrank beneath the fierce stabbing of those incisive words, and, in his
ungovernable grief, flung himself beside the son, whom he feared death
wo