He was alone with her in their chamber when she revived, and the earliest effort of her restored consciousness was to seize both his hands in hers, and scan his face searchingly—­it would seem agonizingly—­until his fond smile dispelled the unspoken dread.

“Ah!” she murmured, hiding her face upon his bosom, “she is still alive, then!  I thought—­I thought”—­a mighty sob—­“Don’t despise your weak, silly wife, darling! but it was very terrible!  I believed it was the last struggle, and was appalled at the sight.  And my poor Herbert! he was frightfully overcome.  Did you notice him?  Will you send him to me, dear?  I can soothe him better than any one else—­prepare him for what is, I fear, inevitable.  I shall not give way again to my terrors.”

The brother and sister were still together when word was brought, two hours later that Mabel had fallen into a profound sleep—­a good omen, the doctor said.

“Thank Heaven!” ejaculated Herbert, fervently, his eyes softening until he turned away to conceal his emotion.

He was haggard with solicitude, while Mrs. Aylett’s healthful bloom betokened slight interest in the termination of the seizure, a glance at which had thrown her into a faint.  Nor did she echo the thanksgiving.  She waited until the messenger had gone, and continued the conversation her entrance had interrupted.

“I incline to the belief that she caught the name, in some manner, on Christmas before last.  He was delirious, too, and although doctor and nurse reported that he did not speak articulately after he was brought in, she may have heard more than they.  From what has been told me, I gather that she was in the room with him alone, while Mrs. Sutton was down-stairs looking for Dr. Ritchie.  In a lucid interval he may have given his name—­possibly some particulars of his history.  Unless—­are you positive there has been no indiscretion on your part, or that others may have talked negligently to her, because she was a member of the family?”

“There are topics of which we—­your mother, sister, and brothers—­never speak, even to one another.  You may trust us that far,” rejoined Herbert, emphatically.  “Nor do I see what we can do, except wait for other proof that Mabel really knows anything beyond a name she has picked up at random and never, to my knowledge, repeated, save in her ravings.  Should she recover, the test can be easily applied, and we can judge then, how to handle the dilemma.”

“Should she recover!” He said the words reluctantly, as loth to express the doubt.

His sister’s lips twitched nervously into a sinister smile.  It was as if she would have whispered, had she dared, “Heaven forbid!”

“You have chosen a toilsome and a perilous path, Clara,” he resumed, by and by.  “I do not wonder that you are, with all your courage and sanguine trust in your own powers, sometimes disquieted, and often weary.”