They were not thinking of us, not the least. Only just ere they passed our house Ursula turned slightly round, and looked behind; a quiet, maidenly look, with the smile still lingering on her mouth. She saw nothing, and no one; for John had pulled me from the window, and placed himself out of sight. So, turning back again, she went on her way. They both disappeared.
"Now, Phineas, it is all ended."
"What do you mean?"
"I have looked on her for the last time."
"Nay—she is not going yet."
"But I am—fleeing from the devil and his angels. Hurrah, Phineas, lad! We'll have a merry night. To-morrow I am away to Bristol, to set sail for America."
He wrung my hands with a long, loud, half-mad laugh; and then dropped heavily on a chair.
A few hours after, he was lying on my bed, struck down by the first real sickness he had ever known. It was apparently a low agueish fever, which had been much about Norton Bury since the famine of last year. At least, so Jael said; and she was a wise doctoress, and had cured many. He would have no one else to attend him—seemed terrified at the mere mention of Dr. Jessop. I opposed him not at first, for well I knew, whatever the proximate cause of his sickness might be, its root was in that mental pang which no doctors could cure. So I trusted to the blessed quiet of a sick-room—often so healing to misery—to Jael's nursing, and his brother's love.
After a few days we called in a physician—a stranger from Coltham—who pronounced it to be this Norton Bury fever, caught through living, as he still persisted in doing, in his old attic, in that unhealthy alley where was Sally Watkins's house. It must have been coming on, the doctor said, for a long time; but it had no doubt now reached its crisis. He would be better soon.
But he did not get better. Days slid into weeks, and still he lay there, never complaining, scarcely appearing to suffer, except from the wasting of the fever; yet when I spoke of recovery he "turned his face unto the wall"—weary of living.