“That seizure was very dreadful, but I saw no foam on her lips like most epileptics, and I watched narrowly.”

“There are modifications of the disease, Claude; hers is of a passive kind, with very few or no convulsive struggles—­more like syncope.  Had you not better retire now?”

“Still, it is epilepsy?  No, do not banish me yet.”

“That is what the doctors call it, I believe, Claude.  Dr. Pemberton is too guarded or politic, one or the other—­all Quakers are, you know—­to give it a name, however.  Dr. Physick told papa what it was very plainly, years ago.”

“Ah I he was good authority, certainly a great physician and a philosopher as well; but, Evelyn, it is very awful,” with a groan, and perhaps a shudder.  “Very hard to get over or to bear.”

“Yes, and the worst of it is it will increase with age, and the end is so deplorable—­idiocy or madness, you know, invariably.  Early death is desirable for Miriam.  Her best friends should not wish to see her life prolonged.  It is an inheritance, probably.  Her mother died of some inscrutable incurable disease, I suppose like this.”

“O God!  O God! it is almost more than I can stand.”

I heard him pacing the room slowly up and down, and my impulse was to part the curtains, to call him to me and comfort him, but I could not; I was too weak even to speak as yet, and bound as with a spell, a nightmare.

A whirl of vivid joy passed through me like an electric flash, however, as I recognized in his disquietude the strength of his affection.  Evelyn’s malignant cruelty and falsehood were lost sight of in the bliss of this conviction; yet my triumph was but brief.

“Evelyn,” he said, speaking low, and pausing in his slow, continued pace.—­“Evelyn, just as she lies there sleeping, I would she could lie forever!  Then happiness could dawn for us again.”

“Never, Claude Bainrothe!”

“You are unforgiving, my Evelyn! you have no mercy on me nor my sufferings.  You make no allowance for necessity, or the desperation of my condition.  In debt myself, and so long a cause of expense and anxiety to my father, whose sacrifices for me have been manifold, and before whom ruin is grimly yawning even now, how could I act otherwise, consistently with the duty of a son?  Nay, what manhood would there have been in consigning you to such a fate as awaited penniless wife of mine?

“I did not think of these things, did not know them even, when we first met, and when I told you of my sudden passion I was sincere, Evelyn, then, as I am now, for it is unchanged, and you know that it is so.

“When the dark necessity was laid bare to me, and I felt it my duty to cancel our engagement, you bore it bravely, you kept my counsel, you assisted me in my projects; you proved yourself all that was noble and magnanimous in woman.  What marvel, then, that I more than ever loved you, and wished the obstacle removed that divides us, and yearn for my lost happiness now dearer to me than before, only to be renewed through you, Evelyn! that I still adore!—­woman most beautiful, most beloved!”