he cannot have gone far. Bring him
back to me; quick, or he will be gone."

"Who do you mean, dear?"

"Arthur, of course--Arthur."

"Hush, Angela!" said Mr. Fraser, "he has been gone a long time; you
have been very ill."

She did not say anything, but turned her face to the pillow and wept,
apparently as much from exhaustion as from any other cause, and then
dropped off to sleep again.

"Her reason is saved," said Dr. Williamson, as soon as they were
outside the door.

"Thanks be to Providence and you, doctor."

"Thanks to Providence alone. It is a case in which I could do little
or nothing. It is a most merciful deliverance. All that you have to do
now is to keep her perfectly quiet, and, above all, do not let her
father come near her at present. I will call in and tell him. Lady
Bellamy? Oh! about the same. She is a strange woman; she never
complains, and rarely speaks--though twice I have heard her break out
shockingly. There will never be any alternation in her case till the
last alteration. Good-bye; I will look round to-morrow."

After this, Angela's recovery was, comparatively speaking, rapid,
though of course the effects of so severe a shock to the nervous
system could not be shaken off in a day. Though she was no longer mad,
she was still in a disturbed state of mind, and subject to strange
dreams or visions. One in particular that visited her several nights
in a succession, made a great impression upon her.

First, it would seem to her that she was wide awake in the middle of
the night, and there would creep over her a sense of unmeasured space,
infinite silence, and intense solitude. She would think that she was
standing on a dais at the end of a vast hall, down which ran endless
rows of pillars supporting an inky sky which was the roof. There was
no light in the hall, yet she could clearly see; there was no sound,
but she could hear the silence. Only a soft radiance shone from her
eyes and brow. She was not afraid, though lonely, but she felt that
something would presently come to make an end of solitude. And so she
stood for many years or ages--she could not tell which--trying to
fathom the mystery of that great place, and watching the light that
streamed from her forehead strike upon the marble floor and pillars,
or thread the darkness like a shooting star, only to reveal new depths
of blackness beyond those it pierced. At length there came, softly
falling from the sky-roof which never stirred