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