obligations of his glorious art.  Reverently, as
in a temple, I stood in the virgin's chamber.
When her mother placed her hand in mine, and
I felt the throb of its pulse, I was aware of no
quicker beat of my own heart. I looked with a
steady eye on the face, more beautiful from the
flush that deepened the delicate hues of the
young cheek, and the lustre that brightened the
dark blue of the wandering eyes. She did not
at first heed me; did not seem aware of my
presence; but kept murmuring to herself words
which I could not distinguish.

At length, when I spoke to her, in that low,
soothing tone which we learn at the sick-bed,
the expression of her face altered suddenly;
she passed the hand I did not hold over her
forehead, turned round, looked at me full and
long, with unmistakable surprise, yet not as if
the surprise displeased her; less the surprise
which recoils from the sight of a stranger than
that which seems doubtfully to recognise an
unexpected friend! Yet on the surprise there
seemed to creep something of apprehension—of
fear;—her hand trembled, her voice quivered,
as she said,

"Can it be, can it be? Am I awake?
Mother, who is this?"

"Only a kind visitor, Dr. Fenwick, sent by
Mrs. Poyntz, for I was uneasy about you, darling.
How are you now?"

"Better.  Strangely better."

She removed her hand gently from mine, and
with an involuntary modest shrinking, turned
towards Mrs. Ashleigh, drawing her mother
towards herself, so that she became at once
hidden from me.

Satisfied that there was here no delirium, nor
even more than the slight and temporary fever
which often accompanies a sudden nervous
attack in constitutions peculiarly sensitive, I
retired noiselessly from the room, and went not
into that which had been occupied by the
deceased inmate, but down stairs into the drawing-
room, to write my prescription.  I had already
sent the servant off with it to the chemist's
before Mrs. Ashleigh joined me.

"She seems recovering surprisingly; her
forehead is cooler; she is perfectly self-
possessed, only she cannot account for her own
seizure, cannot account either for the fainting
or the agitation with which she awoke from
sleep."

"I think I can account for both.  The first
room in which she entered—that in which
she fainted—had its window open; the sides of
the window are overgrown with rank creeping
plants in full blossom. Miss Ashleigh had
already predisposed herself to injurious effects
from the effluvia, by fatigue, excitement,
imprudence in sitting out at the fall of a heavy
dew. The sleep after the fainting fit was the
more disturbed, because Nature, always alert
and active in subjects so young, was making its
own effort to right itself from an injury. Nature
has nearly succeeded.  What I have prescribed
will a little aid and accelerate that which Nature
has yet to do, and in a day or two I do not
doubt that your daughter will be perfectly
restored.  Only let me recommend care to avoid
exposure to the open air during the close of the
day.  Let her avoid also the room in which she
was first seized, for it is a strange phenomenon
in nervous temperaments that a nervous attack
may, without visible cause, be repeated in the
same place where it was first experienced. You
had better shut up the chamber for at least some
weeks, burn fires in it, repaint and paper it,
sprinkle chloroform.  You are not, perhaps,
aware that Dr. Lloyd died in that room after a
prolonged illness. Suffer me to wait till your
servant returns with the medicine, and let me
employ the interval in asking a few questions.
Miss Ashleigh, you say, never had a fainting fit
before. I should presume that she is not what
we call strong. But has she ever had any illness
that alarmed you?"

"Never."

"No great liability to cold and cough, to attacks
of the chest or lungs?"

"Certainly not. Still I have feared that she
may have a tendency to consumption. Do you
think so? Your questions alarm me!"

"I do not think so; but before I pronounce
a positive opinion, one question more. You say
you feared a tendency to consumption. Is that
disease in her family? She certainly did not
inherit it from you. But on her father's side?"

"Her father," said Mrs. Ashleigh, with tears
in her voice, "died young, but of brain fever,
which the medical men said was brought on
by over study."

"Enough, my dear madam. What you say
confirms my belief that your daughter's
constitution is the very opposite to that in which
the seeds of consumption lurk. It is rather
that far nobler constitution, which the keenness
of the nervous susceptibility renders delicate
but elastic—as quick to recover as it is to
suffer."

"Thank you, thank you, Dr. Fenwick, for
what you say. You take a load from my heart.
For Mr. Vigors, I know, thinks Lilian consumptive,
and Mrs. Poyntz has rather frightened me
at times by hints to the same effect.  But when
you speak of nervous susceptibility, I do not
quite understand you. My daughter is not what
is commonly called nervous. Her temper is
singularly even."

"But if not excitable, should you also say
that she is not impressionable? The things
which do not disturb her temper, may, perhaps,
deject her spirits.  Do I make myself
understood?"

"Yes, I think I understand your distinction.
But I am not quite sure if it applies. To most
things that affect the spirits she is not more
sensitive than other girls, perhaps less so. But
she is certainly very impressionable in some
things."

"In what?"

"She is more moved than any one I ever
knew by objects in external nature, rural
scenery, rural sounds, by music, by the books
that she reads—even books that are not works