an't tell. I'll try and show her the mischief it might bring upon
you; and that now, standing high, as you do, in your father's favor, she
would never forgive herself, if she were the cause of a change towards
you. This consideration will have more weight with her than any that
could touch herself personally."

"But it shall not," cried I, passionately. "Nothing in _my_ fortune
shall stand between my mother and her love for me."

She bent down and looked at me with an intensity in her stare that I
cannot describe; it was as if, by actual steadfastness, she was able to
fix me, and read me in my inmost heart.

"From which of your parents, Digby," said she, slowly, "do you derive
this nature?"

"I do not know; papa always says I am very like him."

"And do you believe that papa is capable of great self-sacrifice? I
mean, would he let his affections lead him against his interests?"

"That he would! He has told me over and over the head is as often wrong
as right,--the heart only errs about once in five times." She fell on
my neck and kissed me as I said this, with a sort of rapturous delight.
"Your heart will be always right, dear boy," said she; once more she
bent down and kissed me, and then hurried away.

This scene must have worked more powerfully on my nerves than I felt,
or was aware of, while it was passing; at all events, it brought back my
fever, and before night I was in wild delirium. Of the seven long weeks
that followed, with all their alternations, I know nothing. My first
consciousness was to know myself, as very weak and propped by pillows,
in a half-darkened room, in which an old nurse-tender sat and mingled
her heavy snorings with the ticking of the clock on the chimney. Thus
drowsily pondering, with a debilitated brain, I used to fancy that I had
passed away into another form of existence, in which no sights or sounds
should come but these dreary breathings, and that remorseless ticking
that seemed to be spelling out "eternity."

Sometimes one, sometimes two or three persons would enter the room,
approach the bed, and talk together in whispers, and I would languidly
lift up my eyes and look at them, and though I thought they were not
altogether unknown to me, the attempt at recognition would have been
an effort so full of pain that I would, rather than make it, fall back
again into apathy. The first moment of perfect consciousness--when I
could easily follow all that I heard, and remember it after