her forehead, and gazed upon her convulsed and changing face, and called
upon her in a voice which could once have allayed her wildest emotions;
and had the agony of seeing her eye dwell upon me with the most estranged
indifference and the most vehement and fearful aversion. But ever and
anon, she uttered words which chilled the very marrow of my bones; words
which I would not, dared not believe, had any meaning or method in their
madness--but which entered into my own brain, and preyed there like the
devouring of a fire. There was a truth in those ravings--a reason in that
incoherence--and my cup was not yet full.

"At last, one physician, who appeared to me to have more knowledge than
the rest of the mysterious workings of her dreadful disease, advised me
to take her to the scenes of her first childhood: 'Those scenes,' said
he, justly, 'are in all stages of life, the most fondly remembered; and I
have noted, that in many cases of insanity, places are easier recalled
than persons: perhaps, if we can once awaken one link in the chain, it
will communicate to the rest.'

"I took this advice, and set off to Norfolk. Her early home was not many
miles distant from the churchyard where you once met me, and in that
churchyard her mother was buried. She had died before Gertrude's flight;
the father's death had followed it: perhaps my sufferings were a just
retribution. The house had gone into other hands, and I had no difficulty
in engaging it. Thank Heaven, I was spared the pain of seeing any of
Gertrude's relations.

"It was night when we moved to the house. I had placed within the room
where she used to sleep, all the furniture and books, with which it
appeared, from my inquiries, to have been formerly filled. We laid her in
the bed that had held that faded and altered form, in its freshest and