'Yes, Stella, I am here.'
Then there was silence again. Presently there was a ring, and the hall-door was opened. Langdale went out and met his stepfather in the hall.
'Well, Anselm, have you seen my Australian friend, Mrs. Ritchie?' he asked in a cheery voice, as he put down one or two books and a bundle of proofs damp from the printer's, end drew off his fur-lined gloves. 'Does she not speak German with wonderful verve? She is still here? Ah, that is good—that is good. I thought she would find Kleinsauber's "Comparative Ethnology" a fascinating work. You see, with all her vivacity, she has an unusual love of knowledge. In that she is like your sister Amalie—a combination which is, above all others, calculated to make a woman happy.'
'Very true,' answered Langdale gravely. And then he told the Professor that the Australian lady seemed suddenly indisposed—that he feared she was far from well.
'Ah, now that you speak of it, I have thought each time I saw her that she was greatly paler and thinner. Oh, she is staying only a few houses away. Her husband is in London. She must come and stay with us as soon as your mother returns.'
The good Professor hurried into the study. 'My dear young lady, you are not well. Perhaps you have been reading Kleinsauber's book too closely. You saw it the moment you came in, of course—here on the table? It is wonderful! wonderful!' etc.
The kind, benevolent old face, bending over her with anxious solicitude, helped Stella a little to recall her straying faculties.
When she spoke of going, the Professor proposed to get a hackney carriage, but Stella said the little walk through the fresh air would revive her. The Professor and Langdale walked with her to the pension, and she bade them good-bye at the door, saying that she would be better on the morrow. Early next day Langdale received the two fatal letters, which Stella enclosed with the words: 'To-day I cannot see very well, nor think. Things are going away from me. I only know I will do whatever you wish.'
That night she was prostrated with acute fever. She lay for weeks hovering between life and death. Time after time the crisis seemed to have passed; but a disastrous wave of recollection would sweep over her; and then the fever re-asserted itself once more. But in the end her youth and hitherto unbroken physique triumphed. She struggled back to life shaken and wasted. Day by day she gained a little strength. But mentally a strange change had been wrought. She remembered all that had passed, but the sources of emotion seemed atrophied. It was like a moral aphasia. She had forgotten how to feel; and she shrank from the possibility of mental suffering with a certain morbid horror. All the passion and ardour and power of vivid emotion had left her. If she could be glad for anything, she would have been glad that now at last she knew what it was to have a sluggish nature—a heart equally steeled against hope and memory.
CHAPTER L.