rted, to meet again--upon earth
never any more.

The next time woman's lips touched Guy Livingstone's they were his
mother's, and he had been a corpse an hour.

He went, without looking back; his step was slow and unsteady, very
different from the firm, even tread of three hours ago. The power of
volition and self-direction was very nearly gone. Through a half open
door on the lower story he caught a glimpse of a haggard face lighted up
by wolfish eyes, and heard a savage, growling voice. He felt that both
eyes and voice cursed him as he passed; and afterward, recalling these
things vaguely, as one does the incidents of a hideous dream, he knew
that, for the second time, he had seen Cyril Brandon. Guy could hardly
tell how he reached London that night, for the brain fever was coming on
that the next morning held him in its clutches fast.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"Quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse."

The tidings of her son's illness reached Lady Catharine quickly at
Kerton Manor. I did not hear of it till a day later, and when I arrived
I found her nearly exhausted by sleeplessness and anxiety, though she
had not been Guy's nurse for more than thirty-six hours.

The sick-bed of delirium taxes the energies of the watcher very
differently from any other. There is a sort of fascination in the roll
of the restless head, tossing from side to side, as if trying to escape
from the pressure of a heavy hot hand; in the glare of the eager eyes,
that follow you every where, with a question in them that they never
wait to have answered; in the incoherent words, just trembling on the
verge of a revelation, but always leaving the tale half told, that
creates a perpetual strain on the attention, enough to wear out a strong
man.

There have been men, they say, who, sensible of the approach of
delirium, chose the one person who should attend them, and ordered their
doors to be closed against all others, preferring to die almost alone to
the risk of what their ravings might betray; but I have heard, also,
that there are secrets--secrets shared, too, by many confederates--to
which neither fever or intoxication ever gave a clew. The hot blood grew
chill for an instant, and the babbling tongue was tied when the dreamer
came near the frontier ground, where the oath reared itself distinct and
threatening as ever, while all else was fantastic and vague.

There was something of this in Guy's case. We could he