Suddenly, while Gilbert Fenton was meditating in this idle desultory manner, the sleeper awakened, looked full at him, and called him by his name.

“Gilbert,” he said very quietly, “is it really you?”

It was the first time, in all his long watches by that bed, that John Saltram had recognised him.  The sick man had talked of him often in his delirium; but never before had he looked his former friend in the face with one ray of recognition in his own.  An indescribable thrill of pain went through Gilbert’s heart at the sound of that calm utterance of his name.  How sweet it would have been to him, what a natural thing it would have seemed, to have fallen upon his old friend’s breast and wept aloud in the deep joy of this recovery!  But they were friends no longer.  He had to remember how base a traitor this man had been to him.

“Yes, John, it is I.”

“And you have been here for a long time.  O God, how many months have I been lying here?  The time seems endless; and there have been so many people round me—­a crowd of strange faces—­all enemies, all against me.  And people in the next room—­that was the worst of all.  I have never seen them, but I have always known that they were there.  They could not deceive me as to that—­hiding behind that door, and watching me as I lay here.  You might have turned them out, Gilbert,” he added peevishly; “it seems a hard thing that you could let them stay there to torment me.”

“There has been no one in either of the rooms, John; no one but myself and the hired nurse, the doctors, and Mrs. Pratt now and then.  These people have no existence out of your sick fancy.  You have been, very ill, delirious, for a long time.  I thank God that your reason has been restored to you; yes, I thank God with all my heart for that.”

“Have I been mad?” the other asked.

“Your mind has wandered.  But that has passed at last with the fever, as the doctors hoped it might.  You are calm now, and must try to keep yourself quiet; there must be no more talk between us to-night.”

The sick man took no notice of this injunction; but for the time was not disobedient, and lay for some minutes staring at the watcher’s face with a strange half-vacant smile upon his own.

“Gilbert,” he said at last, “what have they done with my wife?  Why has she been kept away from me?”

“Your wife?  Marian?”

“Yes Marian.  You know her name, surely.  Did she know that I was ill, and yet stayed away from me?”

“Was her place here, John Saltram?—­that poor girl whom you married under a false name, whom you tried to hide from all the world.  Have you ever brought her here?  Have you ever given her a wife’s license, or a wife’s place?  How many lies have you not told to hide that which any honest man would have been proud to confess to all the world?”