So worked my fate! These reflections continued to haunt and
oppress me, by night and day, and life itself seemed a bitter burden in
that interval of rebellious agony, and in that terrible seclusion, where
luxury itself became an additional engine of torture.
Days passed, alternately of leaden apathy and bitter gloom, varied by
irrepressible paroxysms of despair. Whenever I found myself alone, even
for a few moments, I paced my room and wept aloud, or prayed
passionately. There were times when I felt that my Creator heard and
pitied me; others when I persuaded myself his ear was closed inexorably
against me.
I suffered fearfully--this could not last. The accusation brought
against me by my enemies seemed almost ready to be realized, when my
body magnanimously assumed the penalty the soul was perhaps about to
pay, and drifted off to fever.
Then, for the first time, came the man I had until then believed a myth,
and sat beside me in the shadow, and administered to me small, mystic
pellets, that he assured me, in low, husky whispers, and foreign accent,
would infallibly cure my malady--my physical one, at least; as for the
mind, its forces, he regretted to add, were beyond such influence!
For a moment, the wild suspicion intruded on my fevered brain that this
leech was no other than Basil Bainrothe himself, disguised for his own
dark purposes; but the tall, square, high-shouldered form that rose
before me to depart (taller, by half a head, than the man I suspected of
this fresh deception), and the angular movements and large extremities
of Dr.
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