While she read, the cloud melted away from Euphra’s face; a sweet sleep followed; and the paroxysm was over for the time.

Was Euphra insane? and were these the first accesses of daily fits of madness, which had been growing and approaching for who could tell how long?

Even if she were mad, or going mad, was not this the right way to treat her?  I wonder how often the spiritual cure of faith in the Son of Man, the Great Healer, has been tried on those possessed with our modern demons.  Is it proved that insanity has its origin in the physical disorder which, it is now said, can be shown to accompany it invariably?  Let it be so:  it yet appears to me that if the physician would, like the Son of Man himself, descend as it were into the disorganized world in which the consciousness of his patient exists, and receiving as fact all that he reveals to him of its condition —­ for fact it is, of a very real sort —­ introduce, by all the means that sympathy can suggest, the one central cure for evil, spiritual and material, namely, the truth of the Son of Man, the vision of the perfect friend and helper, with the revelation of the promised liberty of obedience —­ if he did this, it seems to me that cures might still be wrought as marvellous as those of the ancient time.

It seems to me, too, that that can be but an imperfect religion, as it would be a poor salvation, from which one corner of darkness may hide us; from whose blessed health and freedom a disordered brain may snatch us; making us hopeless outcasts, till first the physician, the student of physical laws, shall interfere and restore us to a sound mind, or the great God’s-angel Death crumble the soul-oppressing brain, with its thousand phantoms of pain and fear and horror, into a film of dust in the hollow of the deserted skull.

Hugh repaired immediately to Falconer’s chambers, where he was more likely to find him during the day than in the evening.  He was at home.  He told him of his interview with Euphra, and her feeling that the count was not far off.

“Do you think there can be anything in it?” asked he, when he had finished his relation.

“I think very likely,” answered his friend.  “I will be more on the outlook than ever.  It may, after all, be through the lady herself that we shall find the villain.  If she were to fall into one of her trances, now, I think it almost certain she would go to him.  She ought to be carefully watched and followed, if that should take place.  Let me know all that you learn about her.  Go and see her again to-morrow, that we may be kept informed of her experiences, so far as she thinks proper to tell them.”

“I will,” said Hugh, and took his leave.

But Margaret, who knew Euphra’s condition, both spiritual and physical, better than any other, had far different objects for her, through means of the unholy attraction which the count exercised over her, than the discovery of the stolen ring.  She was determined that neither sleeping nor waking should she follow his call, or dance to his piping.  She should resist to the last, in the name of God, and so redeem her lost will from the power of this devil, to whom she had foolishly sold it.