While I was directing that the necessary care should be taken of her, Clara came in; she was trembling and pale; and, when I anxiously asked her the cause of her agitation, she threw herself into my arms weeping and exclaiming—­“Uncle, dearest uncle, do not hate me for ever!  I must tell you, for you must know, that Evelyn, poor little Evelyn”—­her voice was choked by sobs.  The fear of so mighty a calamity as the loss of our adored infant made the current of my blood pause with chilly horror; but the remembrance of the mother restored my presence of mind.  I sought the little bed of my darling; he was oppressed by fever; but I trusted, I fondly and fearfully trusted, that there were no symptoms of the plague.  He was not three years old, and his illness appeared only one of those attacks incident to infancy.  I watched him long—­his heavy half-closed lids, his burning cheeks and restless twining of his small fingers—­the fever was violent, the torpor complete—­enough, without the greater fear of pestilence, to awaken alarm.  Idris must not see him in this state.  Clara, though only twelve years old, was rendered, through extreme sensibility, so prudent and careful, that I felt secure in entrusting the charge of him to her, and it was my task to prevent Idris from observing their absence.  I administered the fitting remedies, and left my sweet niece to watch beside him, and bring me notice of any change she should observe.

I then went to Idris, contriving in my way, plausible excuses for remaining all day in the Castle, and endeavouring to disperse the traces of care from my brow.  Fortunately she was not alone.  I found Merrival, the astronomer, with her.  He was far too long sighted in his view of humanity to heed the casualties of the day, and lived in the midst of contagion unconscious of its existence.  This poor man, learned as La Place, guileless and unforeseeing as a child, had often been on the point of starvation, he, his pale wife and numerous offspring, while he neither felt hunger, nor observed distress.  His astronomical theories absorbed him; calculations were scrawled with coal on the bare walls of his garret:  a hard-earned guinea, or an article of dress, was exchanged for a book without remorse; he neither heard his children cry, nor observed his companion’s emaciated form, and the excess of calamity was merely to him as the occurrence of a cloudy night, when he would have given his right hand to observe a celestial phenomenon.  His wife was one of those wondrous beings, to be found only among women, with affections not to be diminished by misfortune.  Her mind was divided between boundless admiration for her husband, and tender anxiety for her children—­she waited on him, worked for them, and never complained, though care rendered her life one long-drawn, melancholy dream.

He had introduced himself to Adrian, by a request he made to observe some planetary motions from his glass.  His poverty was easily detected and relieved.  He often thanked us for the books we lent him, and for the use of our instruments, but never spoke of his altered abode or change of circumstances.  His wife assured us, that he had not observed any difference, except in the absence of the children from his study, and to her infinite surprise he complained of this unaccustomed quiet.