Every one knows with what enthusiasm the returned travellers were hailed.  Amid the felicitations, the praises, the banquets, the varied excitements of the time, William forgot his ill-health.  When these were over, he reopened his office, and prepared to enter once more on the active duties of his profession.  But he was unfit for it; John and I both saw this, and urged him to abandon the attempt for the present,—­to stay with us, to enjoy rest, books, society, and not till his health was fully reestablished undertake the prosecution of business.

“You forget, my good sister,” he laughingly said to me one day,—­(he could jest on the subject now,)—­“that I have not the fortune of our John,—­I did not marry an heiress, and I have my own way to make.  I had got up a few rounds of the ladder when an adverse fate dragged me down.  Being a free man once more, I must struggle up again as quickly as may be.”

“Oh, for that matter,” I returned, in the same tone, “I had some part, perhaps, in the adverse fate you speak of; so it is but fair that I should make you what recompense I can.  I am an admirable nurse; and you will gain time, if you will deliver yourself up to my care, and not go back to Coke and Chitty till I give you leave.  Seriously, William, I fear you do not know how ill you are, and how unsafe it is for you to go on with business.”

He yielded without much persuasion, and came home to us.  Those were happy days.  William and I were constantly together.  I read to him, I sung to him, and played chess with him; on mild days I drove him out in my own little pony-carriage.  Did he love me all this time?  I could not tell.  Never by look or tone did he intimate that the old affection yet lived in his heart.  I fancied he felt as I with him,—­perfect content in my companionship, without a thought or wish beyond.  We were made for each other; our tastes, our habits of mind and feeling, fully harmonized; had we been born brother and sister, we should have preferred each other to all the world, and, remaining single for each other’s sakes, have passed our lives together.

So the time wore on, sweetly and placidly, and only I seemed to notice the failure in our invalid; but I watched for it too keenly, too closely, to be blinded.  The occasional rallies of strength that gave John such hope, and cheered William himself so greatly, did not deceive me; I knew they were but the fluctuations of his malady.  Changes in the weather, or a damp east wind, did not account to me for his relapses; I knew he was in the grasp of a fell, a fatal disease; it might let him go awhile, give him a little respite, as a cat does the mouse she has caught,—­but he never could escape,—­his doom was fixed.

But you may be sure I gave him no hint of it, and he never seemed to suspect it for himself.  One could not believe such blindness possible, did we not see it verified in so many instances, year after year.