It was evening; a cheerful mixture of twilight and firelight filled the apartment in which our hero lay, slowly recovering from a brain fever of many weeks duration.

He had been long delirious, and as yet had not recognised the friends who were around him, or been conscious of any event which had occurred since the morning on which Lady Arden had arrived at Geneva. But his crisis was now past, and much was expected from the peaceful and profound sleep he had enjoyed for nearly the whole, both of the last night and of the last day. A group of itinerant musicians had stopped beneath his window, and were performing some simple strain, which, though possibly conducive to his awaking just at that moment, fell on his half conscious ear with indescribable sweetness. Gradually his eyes began to open: at first but in an imperceptible degree; yet, through the still veiling lashes he now saw confusedly, visions, as of angels, hovering around his pillow. While a countenance which bent over his, watching, as it were, his slumbers, seemed to grow each moment brighter and brighter, till, for one second, he distinctly beheld (or did he dream), the face of Caroline! It disappeared instantly, and was succeeded by that of his sister Madeline; but the shadow of a form glided round the curtain which the eye of Alfred anxiously followed.

It was Caroline; she had gone to announce to Lady Arden Alfred's awaking.

Lady Arden had been also ill herself, and was not yet able to bear much fatigue: she had, therefore, lain down while Caroline and Madeline cheered each other's watch in the sick chamber. The music in the street had alarmed our youthful nursetenders, lest it should awake their charge: they had raised their taper fingers, and thus asked each other by signal, whether they should send to have it stopped; while, as a preliminary movement, Caroline had glided to the bedside to note its effect upon the sleeper. She had stood a few seconds, marking as well as the imperfect light would permit, that his eyeballs seemed to move tremulously beneath their lids. Anxious to ascertain the point, she had bent closer and closer to the pillow; when, Alfred's eyes opening as we have described, she had disappeared.

Madeline, as she took the place of the apparition, which had thus quickly vanished, found Alfred making a feeble effort to draw aside the opposite curtain. But he was quite unequal to the task.

"It was—it was she—" he faintly murmured, "Was it not? tell me, Madeline!"

"Yes it was, dear Alfred, but you must not speak! she is quite well."

Fortunately, his extreme bodily weakness did not admit of any very violent paroxysm of feeling. His recollections of the past too, were as yet but confused; so that the overpowering intelligence that Caroline was still living—was near him—was kindly attending him in sickness, came not upon him at once in its full force, but grew with his growing perceptions.

"Where is she gone, Madeline?" he at length breathed, in a scarcely audible whisper.

"Only to my mother's room," replied Madeline, in accents scarcely louder.

"And tell me where we are?" he added, after another pause.

"At Geneva, dearest Alfred. But you must not speak."

"At Geneva!" he repeated, then lay still a very long time, as if endeavouring to recall past events: and she noted with alarm, that pale though he was, after his long illness, a faint flush, was overspreading his brow. He feebly grasped her arm, and looked in her face with an earnestness of expression which she perfectly understood.

"No! no!" she replied, "she was only ill—faint—but she is now quite well, but indeed, you must not speak, dearest Alfred."

"Madeline! is all this true?"

"Yes, quite true: and now, dear Alfred, you must lay still till the doctor comes."

He tried to obey her for a time.

"I cannot, Madeline," he at length whispered, and then, though much exhausted, he continued in broken accents, "the desire—to know—how—it has all happened—will hurt me more—than listening to your—sweet—voice.—So tell me all—and then—I will be composed."

Madeline, judging that of the two it was better he should listen to her than persist in endeavouring to speak himself, replied in the softest of whispers, shading the light of the fire from his face:

"Why, when my mother saw that she had both you and Caroline to nurse, she wrote to us to come here. But, by the time we came, we found dear Caroline so much recovered, that she was nursing both you and my mother, who had then become ill herself from fatigue. But she is now quite well again," she added, seeing Alfred look around. "And she has written to Lady Palliser, and obtained her permission for Caroline to stay with us while we remain abroad, that she may travel home with our party. And now, indeed, I will not speak another word, so you must lay still."

Here the appearance of Lady Arden, and Aunt Dorothea, and soon after of the doctor, relieved Madeline from the difficult task of keeping her refractory patient in order.