addressed to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she
had been engaged to be married. I asked her how the engagement
came to be broken off. She replied that it had not been broken
off, but that it had died out in a very mysterious way. The person
to whom she was engaged--her first love, she called him--was very
poor, and there was no immediate prospect of their being married.
He followed my profession, and went abroad to study. They had
corresponded regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he
had returned to England. From that period she heard no more of
him. He was of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared
that she might have inadvertently done or said something that
offended him. However that might be, he had never written to her
again; and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur. I asked
when the first estrangement had begun, and found that the time at
which she ceased to hear anything of her first lover exactly
corresponded with the time at which I had been called in to my
mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.

A fortnight after that conversation, she died. In course of time,
Arthur married again. Of late years, he has lived principally in
London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.

I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything
like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative. And even when
that later period is reached, the little that I have to say will
not occupy your attention for more than a few minutes. Between six
and seven years ago, the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this
room, came to me, with good professional recommendations, to fill
the position of my assistant. We met, not like strangers, but like
friends--the only difference between us being, that I was very much