"She will die—she will die! Her eyes have
the same heavenly look as my Gilbert's on the
day on which his closed for ever. Her very
words are his last words— ' Forgive me all my
faults to you.' She will die— she will die!"

Hours thus passed away. At length, Faber
entered the room; he spoke first to Mrs. Ashleigh
—meaningless soothings, familiar to the
lips of all who pass from the chamber of the
dying to the presence of mourners, and know
that it is a falsehood to say " Hope," and a
mockery, as yet, to say "Endure."

But he led her away to her own room docile
as a wearied child led to sleep; stayed with her
some time, and then returned to me, pressing
me to his breast, father-like.

"No hope— no hope!" said I, recoiling from
his embrace. " You are silent. Speak! speak!
Let me know the worst."

"I have a hope, yet I scarcely dare to bid
you share it; for it grows rather out of my
heart as man, than my experience as physician.
I cannot think that her soul would be now so
reconciled to earth— so fondly, so earnestly cling
to this mortal life— if it were about to be
summoned away. You know how commonly even
the sufferers who have dreaded Death the most
become calmly resigned to its coming, when
Death visibly reveals itself out from the shadows
in which its shape has been guessed and not
seen. As it is a bad sign for life when the
patient has lost all will to live on, so there is
hope while the patient, yet young and with no
perceptible breach in the great centres of life
(however violently their forts may be stormed),
has still intense faith in recovery, perhaps drawn
(who can say?) from the whispers conveyed from
above to the soul.

"I cannot bring myself to think that all the
uses for which a reason, always so lovely even in
its errors, has been restored, are yet fulfilled. It
seems to me as if your union, as yet so imperfect,
has still for its end that holy life on earth
by which two mortal beings strengthen each
other for a sphere of existence to which this is
the spiritual ladder. Through yourself I have
hope yet for her. Gifted with powers that
rank you high in the manifold orders of man;
thoughtful, laborious, and brave; with a heart
that makes intellect vibrate to every fine touch
of humanity; in error itself, conscientious; in
delusions, still eager for truth; in anger,
forgiving; in wrong, seeking how to repair; and,
best of all, strong in a love which the mean
would have shrunk to defend from the fangs of
the slanderer— a love, raising passion itself out
of the realm of the senses, made sublime by the
sorrows that tried its devotion; with all these
noble proofs in yourself, of a being not meant to
end here— your life has stopped short in its
uses, your mind itself has been drifted, a bark
without rudder or pilot, over seas without shore,
under skies without stars. And wherefore?
Because the Mind you so haughtily vaunted has
refused its companion and teacher in Soul.

"And therefore, through you, I hope that she
will be spared yet to live on. She, in whom
soul has been led dimly astray, by unheeding the
checks and the definite goals which the mind is
ordained to prescribe to its wanderings while
here; the mind taking thoughts from the actual
and visible world, and the soul but vague
glimpses and hints from the instinct of its
ultimate heritage. Each of you two seems to me
as yet incomplete, and your destinies yet
uncompleted. Through the bonds of the heart, through
the trials of time, ye have both to consummate
your marriage. I do not— believe me— I do not
say this in the fanciful wisdom of allegory and
type, save that, wherever deeply examined, allegory
and type run through all the most commonplace
phases of outward and material life. I
hope, then, that she may yet be spared to you;
hope it, not from my skill as physician, but my
inward belief as a Christian. To perfect your
own being and end, each of you has need of the
other!"

I started— the very words that Lilian had
heard in her vision!

"But," resumed Faber, " how can I presume
to trace the numberless links of effects up to
the First Cause, far off— oh, far off— out of the
scope of my reason. I leave that to
philosophers, who would laugh my meek hope to
scorn.

"Possibly, probably, where I, whose calling
has been but to save flesh from the worm, deem
that the life of your Lilian is needed yet, to
develop and train your own convictions of soul,
Heaven in its wisdom may see that her death
would instruct you far more than her life. I
have said: Be prepared for either; wisdom
through joy; or wisdom through grief. Enough
that, looking only through the mechanism by
which this moral world is impelled and
improved, you know that cruelty is impossible to
wisdom. Even a man, or man's law, is never
wise but when it is merciful. But mercy has
general conditions; and that which is mercy to
the myriads may seem hard to the one; and that
which seems hard to the one in the pang of a
moment may be mercy when viewed by the eye
that looks on through eternity."

And from all this discourse— of which I now,
at calm distance of time, recal every word— my
human, loving heart bore away for the moment
but this sentence, " Each has need of the
other;" so that I cried out, " Life, life, life! Is
there no hope for her life? Have you no hope
as physician? I am physician, too; I will see
her. I will judge. I will not be banished from
my post."

"Judge then, as physician, and let the
responsibility rest with you. At this moment, all
convulsion, all struggle has ceased, the frame is
at rest. Look on her, and perhaps only the
physician's eye could distinguish her state from
death. It is not sleep, it is not trance, it is
not the dooming coma from which there is no
awaking. Shall I call it by the name received
in our schools? Is it the catalepsy in which
life is suspended, but consciousness acute? She
is motionless, rigid; it is but with a strain of
my own sense that I know that the breath still