It was the seventeenth day of Ellen's illness, and for six-and-thirty hours she had slept profoundly, waking only at very long intervals, just sufficiently to swallow a few drops of port wine, which Mr. Maitland had ordered to be administered if she woke, and sunk to sleep again. It was that deep, still, almost fearful repose, for it is so like death, which we can scarcely satisfy ourselves is life, except by holding a glass at intervals to the lips, to trace if indeed it receive the moisture of the breath. And nurse Langford, Mrs. Hamilton, and Edward had, through these long hours, watched and scarcely stirred. For they knew that on her waking hung hope or misery, return of intellect, or its confirmed suspension. Mr. Maitland had particularly wished Edward to be with her when she recovered her senses, that his presence might seem as natural as either of her cousins; but he warned him that the least display of agitation on his part, or reference to the past, in her exhausted state, might be fatal to her. It was quite the evening. Widow Langford had lighted the lamp, and sat down by the fire, scarcely able to breathe freely, from the intensity of her hope that Ellen would recover. And if such were her feelings, what were Edward's and Mrs. Hamilton's? The former was kneeling on the right of the bed, his eyes alternately fixed on his sister, and buried in the coverlid. Mrs. Hamilton was on the opposite side, close to Ellen's pillow, the curtain drawn so far back, that the least change on the patient's countenance was discernible. Hour after hour had so passed, the chimes that told their flight were scarcely heard by those anxious watchers. It was about eight o'clock, when a slight movement in Ellen made her aunt's heart so throb, as almost to deprive her of breath; her eyes unclosed, and a smile, such as Mrs. Hamilton had not seen for weeks, nay, months, circled her lips.
"Dear aunt, have I been ill? It seems such a long, long time since I have seen you, and my head feels so strange, so light; and this room, it is my own, I know, but I feel as if it did not belong to me, somehow. Do make my head clear, I can not think at all."
"Do not try to think yet, darling. You have been very, very ill, and to endeavor to think might hurt you. Strength will soon return now, I hope, and then your head will be quite clear again," returned Mrs. Hamilton, quietly and caressingly, though she so trembled with the change from sickening dread to certain hope, that she herself scarcely knew how she spoke at all.
"But what made me so ill, aunt? I feel as if it were some great pain; I can not remember any thing clearly, but yet it seems as if I had been very unhappy—and that—that you did not love me any more. Did any thing make me ill? Was it really so?"
"That I did not love you, my Ellen! Indeed, that was only fancy. You were very unhappy, as we were all, for Edward did not come as soon as we expected him, and the storms were very dreadful, and we feared his ship might have been wrecked, or cast ashore, somewhere very far off, where we could not hear of him; and when you saw him, and knew he was safe, the anxiety and pain you had undergone, made you ill; you know a little thing will do that, dearest."
"But is he really safe, aunt Emmeline? Where is he?"
"Close by you, love. He has been as watchful and anxious a nurse as I have been. Poor fellow, you have given him a sad welcome, but you must make up for it, by-and-by."
Ellen looked languidly, yet eagerly round, as her aunt spoke, and her gaze fixed itself on her brother, who was struggling violently to suppress the emotion which, at the sound of her voice, in connected words, nearly overpowered him; and still more so, when Ellen said, more eagerly than she had yet spoken—
"Dear Edward! come and kiss me, and do not look so sad. I shall soon get well."
He bent over her, and kissed her repeatedly, trying in vain to say something, but he felt so choked, he could not; and Ellen held his hand, and looked earnestly, searchingly in his face, as if trying painfully to define the vague thoughts and memories which seemed all connected with him and with pain, but which would not take a distinct form. Her eye wandered from him for a moment to nurse Langford, who had come to the foot of the bed, and that seemed another face connected with the blank past, and then it fixed itself again on Edward, and her pale face so worked with the effort of thought, that Mrs. Hamilton became alarmed. She saw, too, that Edward was growing paler and paler, and trembled for the continuance of his control. Taking Ellen's hand gently from his, and arranging her pillow at the same time, so as to turn her face rather from him, she said, playfully—