When the party returned from the picnic, it was to find Colonel Bramleigh very ill. Some sort of fit the doctor called it,—not apoplexy nor epilepsy, but something that seemed to combine features of both. It had, he thought, been produced by a shock of some sort, and L'Estrange, who had last been with him before his seizure, was summoned to impart the condition in which he had found him, and whatever might serve to throw light on the attack.

If the curate was nervous and excited by the tidings that reached him of the Colonel's state, the examination to which he was submitted served little to restore calm to his system. Question after question poured in. Sometimes two or three would speak together, and all—except Ellen—accosted him in a tone that seemed half to make him chargeable with the whole calamity. When asked to tell of what they had been conversing, and that he mentioned how Colonel Bramleigh had adverted to matters of faith and belief, Marion, in a whisper loud enough to be overheard, exclaimed, “I was sure of it. It was one of those priestly indiscretions; he would come talking to papa about what he calls his soul's health, and in this way brought on the excitement.”

“Did you not perceive, sir,” asked she, fiercely, “that the topic was too much for his nerves? Did it not occur to you that the moment was inopportune for a very exciting subject?”

“Was his manner easy and natural when you saw him first?” asked Augustus.

“Had he been reading that debate on Servia?” inquired Temple.

“Matter enough there, by Jove, to send the blood to a man's head,” cried Culduff, warmly.

“I 'm convinced it was all religious,” chimed in Marion, who triumphed mercilessly over the poor parson's confusion. “It is what they call 'in season and out of season,' and they are true to their device; for no men on earth more heartily defy the dictates of tact or delicacy.”

“Oh, Marion, what are you saying?” whispered Nelly.

“It's no time for honeyed words, Ellen, in the presence of a heavy calamity; but I 'd like to ask Mr. L'Estrange why, when he saw the danger of the theme they were discussing, he did not try to change the topic.”

“So I did. I led him to talk of myself and my interests.”

“An admirable antidote to excitement, certainly,” muttered Culduff to Temple, who seemed to relish the joke intensely.

“You say that my father had been reading his letters. Did he appear to have received any tidings to call for unusual anxiety?” asked Augustus.

“I found him, as I thought, looking very ill, careworn almost, when I entered. He had been writing, and seemed fatigued and exhausted. His first remark to me was, I remember, a mistake.” L'Estrange here stopped, suddenly. He did not desire to repeat the speech about being invited to the picnic. It would have been an awkwardness on all sides.

“What do you call a mistake, sir?” asked Marion, calmly.

“I mean he asked me something which a clearer memory would have reminded him not to have inquired after.”

“This grows interesting. Perhaps you will enlighten us a little farther, and say what the blunder was.”

“Well, he asked me how it happened that Julia and myself were not of the picnic; forgetting, of course, that we—we had not heard of it.” A deep flush was now spread over his face and forehead, and he looked overwhelmed with shame.

“I see it all; I see the whole thing,” said Marion, triumphantly. “It was out of the worldliness of the picnic sprung all the saintly conversation that ensued.”

“No, the transition was more gradual,” said L'Estrange, smiling; for he was at last amused at the asperity of this cross-examination. “Nor was there what you call any saintly conversation at all. A few remarks Colonel Bramleigh indeed made on the insufficiency of, not the Church, but churchmen, to resolve doubts and difficulties.”

“I heartily agree with him,” broke in Lord Culduff, with a smile of much intended significance.

“And is it possible; are we to believe that all papa's attack was brought on by a talk over a picnic?” asked Marion.

“I think I told you that he received many letters by the post, and to some of them he adverted as being very important and requiring immediate attention. One that came from Rome appeared to cause him much excitement.”

Marion turned away her head with an impatient toss, as though she certainly was not going to accept this explanation as sufficient.

“I shall want a few minutes with Mr. L'Estrange alone in the library, if I may be permitted,” said the doctor, who had now entered the room after his visit to the sick man.

“I hope you may be more successful than we have been,” whispered Marion, as she sailed out of the room, followed by Lord Culduff; and after a few words with Augustus, the doctor and L'Estrange retired to confer in the library.

“Don't flurry me; take me quietly, Doctor,” said the curate, with a piteous smile. “They 've given me such a burster over the deep ground that I 'm completely blown. Do you know,” added he, seriously, “they've cross-questioned me in a way that would imply that I am the cause of this sudden seizure?”

“No, no; they couldn't mean that.”

“There 's no excuse then for the things Miss Bramleigh said to me.”

“Remember what an anxious moment it is; people don't measure their expressions when they are frightened. When they left him in the morning he was in his usual health and spirits, and they come back to find him very ill,—dangerously ill. That alone would serve to palliate any unusual show of eagerness. Tell me now, was he looking perfectly himself? was he in his ordinary spirits, when you met him?”

“No; I thought him depressed, and at times irritable.”

“I see; he was hasty and abrupt. He did not brook contradiction, perhaps?”

“I never went that far. If I dissented once or twice, I did so mildly and even doubtingly.”

“Which made him more exacting and more intolerant, you would say?”

“Possibly it did. I remember he rated me rather sharply for not being contented with a very humble condition in life, though I assured him I felt no impatience at my lowly state, and was quite satisfied to wait till better should befall me. He called me a casuist for saying this, and hinted that all churchmen had the leaven of the Jesuit in them; but he got out of this after a while, and promised to write a letter in my behalf.”

“And which he told me you would find sealed and addressed on this table here. Here it is.”

“How kind of him to remember me through all his suffering!”

“He said something about it being the only reparation he could make you; but his voice was not very clear or distinct, and I could n't be sure I caught his words correctly.”

“Reparation! he owed me none.”

“Well, well, it is possible I may have mistaken him. One thing is plain enough; you cannot give me any clew to this seizure beyond the guess that it may have been some tidings he received by post.”

L'Estrange shook his head in silence, and after a moment said, “Is the attack serious?”

“Highly so.”

“And is his life in danger?”

“A few hours will decide that, but it may be days before we shall know if his mind will recover. Craythorpe has been sent for from Dublin, and we shall have his opinion this evening. I have no hesitation in saying that mine is unfavorable.”

“What a dreadful thing, and how fearfully sudden. I cannot conceive how he could have bethought him of the letter for me at such a moment.”

“He wrote it, he said, as you left him; you had not quitted the house when he began. He said to me, 'I saw I was growing worse, I felt my confusion was gaining on me, and a strange commixture of people and events was occurring in my head; so I swept all my letters and papers into a drawer and locked it, wrote the few lines I had promised, and with my almost last effort of consciousness rang the bell for my servant.'”

“But he was quite collected when he told you this?”

“Yes, it was in one of those lucid intervals when the mind shines out clear and brilliant; but the effort cost him dearly: he has not rallied from it since.”

“Has he over-worked himself; is this the effect of an over-exerted brain?”

“I 'd call it rather the result of some wounded sensibility; he appears to have suffered some great reverse in ambition or in fortune. His tone, so far as I can fathom it, implies intense depression. After all, we must say he met much coldness here. The people did not visit him, there was no courtesy, no kindliness shown him; and though he seemed indifferent to it, who knows how he may have felt it?”

“I do not suspect he gave any encouragement to intimacy; beseemed to me as if declining acquaintance with the neighborhood.”

“Ay, but it was in resentment, I opine; but you ought to know best. You were constantly here?”

“Yes, very frequently; but I am not an observant person; all the little details which convey a whole narrative to others are utterly lost upon me.”

The doctor smiled. It was an expression that appeared to say he concurred in the curate's version of his own nature.

“It is these small gifts of combining, arranging, sifting, and testing, that we doctors have to cultivate,” said he, as he took his hat. “The patient the most eager to be exact and truthful will, in spite of himself, mislead and misguide us. There is a strange bend sinister in human nature, against sincerity, that will indulge itself even at the cost of life itself. You are the physician of the soul, sir; but take my word for it, you might get many a shrewd hint and many a useful suggestion from us, the meaner workmen who only deal with nerves and arteries.”

As he wended his solitary road homewards, L'Estrange pondered thoughtfully over the doctor's words. He had no need, he well knew, to be reminded of his ignorance of mankind; but here was a new view of it, and it seemed immeasurable.

On the whole he was a sadder man than usual on that day. The world around him—that narrow circle whose diameter was perhaps a dozen miles or so—was very sombre in its coloring. He had left sickness and sorrow in a house where he had hitherto only seen festivity and pleasure; and worse again, as regarded himself, he had carried away none of those kindlier sympathies and friendly feelings which were wont to greet him at the great house. Were they really then changed to him? and if so, why so? There is a moral chill in the sense of estrangement from those we have lived with on terms of friendship that, like the shudder that precedes ague, seems to threaten that worse will follow. Julia would see where the mischief lay had she been in his place. Julia would have read the mystery, if there were a mystery, from end to end; but he, he felt it,—he had no powers of observation, no quickness, no tact. He saw nothing that lay beneath the surface, nor, indeed, much that was on the surface. All that he knew was, that at the moment when his future was more uncertain than ever, he found himself more isolated and friendless than ever he remembered to have been. The only set-off against all this sense of desertion was the letter which Colonel Bramleigh had written in his behalf, and which he had remembered to write as he lay suffering on his sick bed. He had told the doctor where to find it, and said it lay sealed and directed. The address was there, but no seal. It was placed in an open envelope, on which was written, “Favored by the Rev. G. L'Estrange.” Was the omission of the seal accident or intention? Most probably accident, because he spoke of having sealed it. And yet that might have been a mere phrase to imply that the letter was finished. Such letters were probably, in most cases, either open, or only closed after being read by him who bore them. Julia would know this. Julia would be able to clear up this point, thought he, as he pondered and plodded homeward.