Poor fellow! he lay stretched on a bed of sickness, his cheeks glowing with the hues of fever, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular and difficult.  Yet it was less painful to see him thus, than to find him fulfilling the animal functions uninterruptedly, his mind sick the while.  I established myself at his bedside; I never quitted it day or night.  Bitter task was it, to behold his spirit waver between death and life:  to see his warm cheek, and know that the very fire which burned too fiercely there, was consuming the vital fuel; to hear his moaning voice, which might never again articulate words of love and wisdom; to witness the ineffectual motions of his limbs, soon to be wrapt in their mortal shroud.  Such for three days and nights appeared the consummation which fate had decreed for my labours, and I became haggard and spectre-like, through anxiety and watching.  At length his eyes unclosed faintly, yet with a look of returning life; he became pale and weak; but the rigidity of his features was softened by approaching convalescence.  He knew me.  What a brimful cup of joyful agony it was, when his face first gleamed with the glance of recognition—­when he pressed my hand, now more fevered than his own, and when he pronounced my name!  No trace of his past insanity remained, to dash my joy with sorrow.

This same evening his mother and sister arrived.  The Countess of Windsor was by nature full of energetic feeling; but she had very seldom in her life permitted the concentrated emotions of her heart to shew themselves on her features.  The studied immovability of her countenance; her slow, equable manner, and soft but unmelodious voice, were a mask, hiding her fiery passions, and the impatience of her disposition.  She did not in the least resemble either of her children; her black and sparkling eye, lit up by pride, was totally unlike the blue lustre, and frank, benignant expression of either Adrian or Idris.  There was something grand and majestic in her motions, but nothing persuasive, nothing amiable.  Tall, thin, and strait, her face still handsome, her raven hair hardly tinged with grey, her forehead arched and beautiful, had not the eye-brows been somewhat scattered—­it was impossible not to be struck by her, almost to fear her.  Idris appeared to be the only being who could resist her mother, notwithstanding the extreme mildness of her character.  But there was a fearlessness and frankness about her, which said that she would not encroach on another’s liberty, but held her own sacred and unassailable.

The Countess cast no look of kindness on my worn-out frame, though afterwards she thanked me coldly for my attentions.  Not so Idris; her first glance was for her brother; she took his hand, she kissed his eye-lids, and hung over him with looks of compassion and love.  Her eyes glistened with tears when she thanked me, and the grace of her expressions was enhanced, not diminished, by the fervour, which caused