The announcement of her being attacked by a definite and recognised disease brings at first a sort of relief to Burgoyne's mind, which, under Cecilia's frightened and frightening word-pictures, had been beset by terrors great in proportion to their vagueness. Now that Amelia is confessedly sick of a fever, there is nothing abnormal in her being "odd," and "stupid," and "wandering," these being only the inevitable stages on a road which will--which _must_ lead to ultimate recovery. His heart is heavy, yet scarcely so heavy as it had been upon his arrival in the morning, when, late in the afternoon--not sooner do the claims upon him of the disorganized and helpless family of his betrothed relax--he returns to the Minerva to look after Byng. Having had every reason to fear that he will not find him at the hotel, but will be obliged again to set off in pursuit of him through the streets and squares so repeatedly traversed last night, he is relieved to learn from the hotel servants that the young man is in his bedroom. He finds him there indeed; no longer stretched in the blessed oblivion of deep sleep upon his bed, but sitting on a hard chair by the open window, his arms resting upon the back, and his face crushed down upon them. By no slightest movement does he show consciousness of his friend's entrance. "I am afraid I have been a long time away," says the latter kindly. "Have you?" answers Byng, his voice coming muffled through lips still buried in his own coat-sleeve. "I do not know; I have done with time!" "I do not know how you have managed that," rejoins Jim, still indulgently, though a shade dryly. "Have you been here all day?" "I do not know where I have been. Yes,"--lifting his head--"I do; I have been to the Piazza d'Azeglio." "Well?" "They know where she is. They were packing her things; through the door I saw them tying the label on the box; if I had tried I could have read the address on the label, but I did not. She had forbidden them to give it to me; in her telegram she had forbidden them to give it to anyone." CHAPTER XXIX. Jim refrains from saying how likely this culmination of his friend's woes has appeared to him, since it would have been the height of the illogical for the Le Marchants to have put themselves to extreme inconvenience in order to escape from a person to whom they immediately afterwards gave the power of following them. He refrains from saying it, because he knows of how very little consoling power the "told you so" philosophy is possessed. "And what will you do now?" "Do! What is there to do? What does a man do when he is shot through the heart?" "I believe that in point of fact he jumps his own height in the air. I know that a buffalo does," replies Burgoyne with a matter-of-fact dryness, which proceeds less from want of sympathy, than from an honest belief that it is the best and kindest method of dealing with Byng's heroics.