till I was alone, I rejoiced when I found myself
in the open streets. I summoned a hackney-coach, and drove as rapidly
as the vehicle would permit to the petty and obscure suburb to which St.
John had directed me. The coach stopped at the door of a very humble but
not absolutely wretched abode. I knocked at the door. A woman opened it,
and, in answer to my inquiries, told me that the poor foreign gentleman
was very ill,--very ill indeed,--had suffered a paralytic stroke,--not
expected to live. His daughter was with him now,--would see no
one,--even Mr. Barnard had been denied admission.

At that name my feelings, shocked and stunned at first by the unexpected
intelligence of the poor Spaniard's danger, felt a sudden and fierce
revulsion. I combated it. "This is no time," I thought, "for any
jealous, for any selfish, emotion. If I can serve her, if I can relieve
her father, let me be contented."--"She will see me," I said aloud, and
I slipped some money in the woman's hand. "I am an old friend of the
family, and I shall not be an unwelcome intruder on the sickroom of the
sufferer."

"Intruder, sir,--bless you, the poor gentleman is quite speechless and
insensible."

At hearing this I could refrain no longer. Isora's disconsolate,
solitary, destitute condition broke irresistibly upon me, and all
scruple of more delicate and formal nature vanished at once. I ascended
the stairs, followed by the old woman--she stopped me by the threshold
of a room on the second floor, and whispered "_There_!" I paused an
instant,--collected breath and courage, and entered. The room was
partially darkened. The curtains were drawn closely around the bed. By
a table, on which stood two or three phials of medicine, I beheld Isora,
listening with an eager, a _most_ eager and intent face to a man whose
garb betrayed his healing profession, and who, laying a finger on
the outstretched palm of his other hand, appeared giving his precise
instructions, and uttering that oracular breath which--mere human words
to him--was a message of fate itself,--a fiat on which hung all that
makes life life to his trembling and devout listener. Monarchs of earth,
ye have not so supreme a power over woe and happiness as one village
leech! As he turned to leave her, she drew from a most slender purse a
few petty coins, and I saw that she muttered some words indicative of
the shame of poverty, as she tremblingly tended them to the outstretched
palm. Twice did that