XVIII.
A PAIR OF MYTHS:
BEING A CHAPTER FROM AN UNPUBLISHED WORK.
Eight days passed away unreckoned, and still I remained unconscious of everything occurring around me. The morning of the ninth dawned, dragged heavily along, and noon approached, whilst I lay in the same comatose state. No alteration had taken place, except that a deeper and sounder sleep seemed to have seized upon me; a symptom hailed by my physician with joy, but regarded by my mother with increased alarm.
Suddenly, the incautious closing of my chamber door, as my sister, Miss Lucy Stanly, then in her fifteenth year, entered the apartment, aroused me from slumber and oblivion.
Abed at noonday! What did it betoken? I endeavored to recall something of the past, but memory for a long time refused its aid, and I appeared as fatally and irremediably unconscious as ever. Gradually, however, my shattered mind recovered its faculties, and in less than an hour after my awakening, I felt perfectly restored. No pain tormented me, and no torpor benumbed my faculties. I rapidly reviewed, mentally, the occurrences of the day before, when, as I imagined, the disaster had happened, and resolved at once to rise from my bed and prosecute my intended journey.
At this moment my father entered the apartment, and observing that I was awake, ventured to speak to me kindly and in a very low tone. I smiled at his uneasiness, and immediately relieved him from all apprehension, by conversing freely and intelligibly of the late catastrophe. His delight knew no bounds. He seized my hand a thousand times, and pressed it again and again to his lips. At length, remembering that my mother was ignorant of my complete restoration, he rushed from the room, in order to be the first to convey the welcome intelligence.