woke, but not to health, not to sense.
Hours were passed in violent convulsions, in which I momentarily feared
her death. To these succeeded stupor, lethargy, not benignant sleep.
That night, my bridal night, I passed as in some chamber to which I had
been summoned to save youth from the grave. At length--at length--life
was rescued, was assured! Life came back, but the mind was gone. She
knew me not, nor her mother. She spoke little and faintly; in the words
she uttered there was no reason.

I pass hurriedly on; my experience here was in fault, my skill
ineffectual. Day followed day, and no ray came back to the darkened
brain. We bore her, by gentle stages, to London. I was sanguine of good
result from skill more consummate than mine, and more especially devoted
to diseases of the mind. I summoned the first advisers. In vain! in
vain!

CHAPTER LXIII.

And the cause of this direful shock? Not this time could it be traced
to some evil spell, some phantasmal influence. The cause was clear, and
might have produced effects as sinister on nerves of stronger fibre if
accompanied by a heart as delicately sensitive, an honour as exquisitely
pure.

The letter found in her hand was without name; it was dated from L----,
and bore the postmark of that town. It conveyed to Lilian, in the biting
words which female malice can make so sharp, the tale we had sought
sedulously to guard from her ear,--her flight, the construction that
scandal put upon it. It affected for my blind infatuation a contemptuous
pity; it asked her to pause before she brought on the name I offered
to her an indelible disgrace. If she so decided, she was warned not to
return to L----, or to prepare there for the sentence that would exclude
her from the society of her own sex. I cannot repeat more, I cannot
minute down all that the letter expressed or implied, to wither the
orange blossoms in a bride's wreath. The heart that took in the venom
cast its poison on the brain, and the mind fled before the presence of
a thought so deadly to all the ideas which its innocence had heretofore
conceived.

I knew not whom to suspect of the malignity of this mean and miserable
outrage, nor did I much care to know. The handwriting, though evidently
disguised, was that of a woman, and, therefore, had I discovered the
author, my manhood would have forbidden me the idle solace of revenge.
Mrs. Poyntz, however resolute and pitiless her hostility when once
aroused, was