guileless kiss on my burning forehead.

[1] And yet, even if we entirely omit the consideration of the soul, that
immaterial and immortal principle which is for a time united to his body,
and view him only in his merely animal character, man is still the most
excellent of animals.--Dr. Kidd, On the Adaptation of External Nature to
the Physical Condition of Man (Sect. iii. p. 18).




CHAPTER LVI.

Lilian recovered, but the strange thing was this: all memory of the weeks
that had elapsed since her return from visiting her aunt was completely
obliterated; she seemed in profound ignorance of the charge on which I
had been confined,--perfectly ignorant even of the existence of Margrave.
She had, indeed, a very vague reminiscence of her conversation with me in
the garden,--the first conversation which had ever been embittered by a
disagreement,--but that disagreement itself she did not recollect. Her
belief was that she had been ill and light-headed since that evening.
From that evening to the hour of her waking, conscious and revived, all
was a blank. Her love for me was restored, as if its thread had never
been broken. Some such instances of oblivion after bodily illness or
mental shock are familiar enough to the practice of all medical men;[1]
and I was therefore enabled to appease the anxiety and wonder of Mrs.
Ashleigh, by quoting various examples of loss, or suspension, of memory.
We agreed that it would be necessary to break to Lilian, though very
cautiously, the story of Sir Philip Derval's murder, and the charge to
which I had been subjected. She could not fail to hear of those events