‘Hate is strong,’ I murmured, as I sank down on my pillow, ’and destiny is strong; but oh, Winnie, Winnie—­stronger than hate, and stronger than destiny and death, is love.  She knows, Winnie, that the life of the man who should dig up that corpse would not be worth an hour’s purchase; she knows, Winnie, that in the court of conscience she alone is answerable now for what may befall; and you are safe!  But poor mother!  My poor dear mother, whom once I loved so dearly, was it indeed you I struggled with just now?  Mother, mother, was it you?’

This interview retarded my recovery, and I had a serious relapse.

The fever was a severe one.  The symptoms were aggravated by these most painful and trying interviews with my mother, and by my increasing anxiety about the fate of Winifred.  Yet my vigorous constitution began to show signs of conquering.  Of Winifred I could learn nothing, save what could be gleaned from the servants in attendance, who seemed merely to have heard that Tom Wynne was missing, that he had probably fallen drunk over the cliff and been washed out to sea, and that his daughter was seeking him everywhere.  As the days passed by, however, and no hint reached me that the corpse had been found on the sands, I concluded that, when the larger mass finally settled on the night of the landslip, the corpse had fallen immediately beneath it, and was buried under the main mass.  Yet, from what I had seen of the corpse’s position, in the rapid view I had of it, perched on the upright mass of sward, I did not understand how this could be.

And so anxiety after anxiety delayed my progress.  Still, on the whole, I felt that the body would not now be dislodged by the tides, and that Winifred would at least be spared a misery compared with which even her uncertainty about her father’s fate would be bearable.  But how I longed to be up and with her!

Dr. Mivart, who attended me, a young medical man of much ability who had finished his medical education in Paris, and had lately settled at Raxton, came every day with great punctuality.

One day, however, he arrived three hours behind his usual time, and seemed to think that some explanation was necessary.

‘I must apologise,’ said he, ’for my unpunctuality to-day, but the fact is that, at the very moment of starting, I was delayed by one of the most interesting—­one of the most extraordinary cases that ever came within my experience, even at the Salpetriere Hospital, where we were familiar with the most marvellous cases of hysteria—­a seizure brought on by terror in which the subject’s countenance mimics the appearance of the terrible object that has caused it.  A truly wonderful case!  I have just written to Marini about it.’

He seemed so much interested in his case, that he aroused a certain interest in me, though at that time the word ‘hysteria’ conveyed an impression to me of a very uncertain and misty kind.