Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment's relief
from it sufficed for my rapture. But I had a cause for disquiet less
acute but less varying than jealousy.

Despite Lilian's recovery from the special illness which had more
immediately absorbed my care, I remained perplexed as to its cause and
true nature. To her mother I gave it the convenient epithet of "nervous;"
but the epithet did not explain to myself all the symptoms I classified by
it. There was still, at times, when no cause was apparent or
conjecturable, a sudden change in the expression of her countenance, in
the beat of her pulse; the eye would become fixed, the bloom would vanish,
the pulse would sink feebler and feebler till it could be scarcely felt;
yet there was no indication of heart disease, of which such sudden
lowering of life is in itself sometimes a warning indication. The change
would pass away after a few minutes, during which she seemed unconscious,
or, at least, never spoke--never appeared to heed what was said to her.
But in the expression of her countenance there was no character of
suffering or distress; on the contrary, a wondrous serenity, that made her
beauty more beauteous, her very youthfulness younger; and when this
spurious or partial kind of syncope passed, she recovered at once without
effort, without acknowledging that she had felt faint or unwell, but
rather with a sense of recruited vitality, as the weary obtain from a
sleep. For the rest her spirits were more generally light and joyous than
I should have premised from her mother's previous description. She would
enter mirthfully into the mirth of young companions round her: she had
evidently quick perception of the sunny sides of life; an infantine
gratitude for kindness; an infantine joy in the trifles that amuse only
those who delight in tastes pure and simple. But when talk rose into
graver and more contemplative topics, her attention became earnest and
absorbed; and sometimes a rich eloquence, such as I have never before nor