He uttered this jest with a faint weary echo of his old merry, melodious
laugh, then turned his face to the wall; and so I left him to repose.




CHAPTER LXXV.

I found Mrs. Ashleigh waiting for me in our usual sitting-room. She was
in tears. She had begun to despond of Lilian's recovery, and she infected
me with her own alarm. However, I disguised my participation in her
fears, soothed and sustained her as I best could, and persuaded her to
retire to rest. I saw Faber for a few minutes before I sought my own
chamber. He assured me that there was no perceptible change for the worse
in Lilian's physical state since he had last seen me, and that her mind,
even within the last few hours, had become decidedly more clear. He
thought that, within the next twenty-four hours, the reason would make a
strong and successful effort for complete recovery; but he declined to
hazard more than a hope that the effort would not exhaust the enfeebled
powers of the frame. He himself was so in need of a few hours of rest
that I ceased to harass him with questions which he could not answer, and
fears which he could not appease. Before leaving him for the night, I
told him briefly that there was a traveller in my but smitten by a disease
which seemed to me so grave that I would ask his opinion of the case, if
he could accompany me to the but the next morning.

My own thoughts that night were not such as would suffer me to sleep.

Before Margrave's melancholy state much of my former fear and abhorrence