Melted with pity for the bruised soul before me, I could no longer deny him the gratification he besought.

“Emma!” I ejaculated; “Emma Harrington!”

He wept aloud, and kissed my hand, and put my arm upon his breast, and caressed it with his own weak head.  I permitted the affectionate creature to display his childish gratitude, and then, taking him by the wrist, I withdrew him from the room.  An infant could not have been more docile with its nurse.  In another moment he was again in custody.

It was in vain that I strove to fall asleep, and to forget the circumstances of the day—­in vain that I endeavored to carry out the resolution which I had taken to my pillow.  Gladly would I have expelled all thought of the idiot from my mind, and risen on the morrow, prepared by rest and sweet suspension of mental labour for profitable deliberation.  Sound as was the advice of my friend, and anxious as I was to follow it, obedience rested not with me, and was impossible.  Should I make known the history of the man?  Should I discover his crime?  This was the question that haunted my repose, and knocked at my ears until my labouring brain ached in its confusion.  What might be the effect of a disclosure upon the future existence of the desolate creature, should he ever recover his reason?  Must he not suffer the extreme penalty of the law?  It was dreadful to think that his life should be forfeited through, and only through, my agency.  There were reasons again equally weighty, why I should not conceal the facts which were in my possession.  How I should have determined at length, I know not, if an argument—­founded on selfishness had not stepped in and turned the balance in favour of the idiot.  Alas, how easy is it to decide when self-interest interposes with its intelligence and aid!  Neither Mr. Fairman nor Doctor Mayhew knew of my connexion with the unfortunate Emma Harrington.  To expose the brother would be to commit myself.  I was not yet prepared to acknowledge to the father of Miss Fairman, or to his friend, the relation that I had borne to that poor girl.  And why not?  If to divulge the secret were an act of justice, why should I hesitate to do it on account of the incumbent, with whom I had broken off all intercourse for ever?  Ah, did I in truth believe that our separation had been final?  Or did I harbour, perhaps against reason and conviction, a hope, a thought of future reconciliation, a shadowy yet not weak belief that all might yet end happily, and that fortune still might favour love!  With such faint hope, and such belief, I must have bribed myself to silence, for I left my couch resolved to keep my secret close.  Doctor Mayhew was deep in the contemplation of a map when I joined him at the breakfast-table.  He did not take his eyes from it when I entered the apartment, and he continued his investigations some time after I had taken my seat.  He raised his head at last, and looked hard at me, apparently without perceiving me, and then he resumed his occupation without having spoken a syllable:  after a further study of five or ten minutes, he shook his head, and pressed his lips, and frowned, and stroked his chin, as though he was just arriving at the borders of a notable and great discovery.  “It will be strange indeed!” he muttered to himself.  “How can we find it out?”