The English doctor in Rome was as kind and attentive as the doctor at San Remo; but although he had not yet pronounced the case hopeless, he took a by no means cheerful view of his patient’s condition. He recommended Colonel Disney to leave the city before the third week in May, and to take his wife to Switzerland, travelling by easy stages, and doing all he could to amuse and interest her. If on the other hand it were important for Colonel Disney to be in England, he might take his wife back to Cornwall in June. But in this case she must return to the south in October. Lungs and heart were both too weak for the risks of an English winter. “We will not go back to England,” decided Disney. “My wife is not fond of Cornwall. Italy has been a delight to her; and Switzerland will be new ground. God grant the summer may bring about an improvement!” The doctor said very little, and promised nothing. Closely as they watched her, with anxious loving looks, it may be that seeing her every day even their eyes did not mark the gradual decline of vitality--the inevitable advance of decay. She never complained; the cough that marked the disease which had fastened on her lungs since February was not a loud or seemingly distressing cough. It was only now and then, when she tried to walk uphill, or over-exerted herself in any way, that her malady became painfully obvious in the labouring chest, flushed cheek, and panting breath; but she made light even of these symptoms, and assured her husband that Rome was curing her. Her spirits had been less equable since Father Rodwell’s appearance. She had alternated between a feverish intensity and a profound dejection. Her changes of mood had been sudden and apparently causeless; and those who watched and cherished her could do nothing to dispel the gloom that often clouded over her. If she were questioned she could only say that she was tired. She would never admit any reason for her melancholy. CHAPTER XXV. “WE’LL BIND YOU FAST IN SILKEN CORDS.” Captain Hulbert was not selfish enough to plead for his personal happiness in the midst of a household shadowed by the foreboding of a great sorrow. Martin Disney’s face, as he looked at his wife in those moments which too plainly marked the progress of decay, was in itself enough to put a check upon a lover’s impatience. How could any man plead for his own pleasure--for the roses and sunshine of life--in the presence of that deep despair? “He knows that he is doomed to lose her,” thought Hulbert; “knows it, and yet tries to hope. I never saw such intense, unquestioning love. One asks one’s self involuntarily about any woman--Is she worth it?” And then he thought of Allegra, truthful and impulsive, strong as steel, transparent as crystal. Yes, such a woman as that was worth the whole of a man’s heart--worthy that a man should live or die for her. But it seemed to him that to compare Isola with Allegra was to liken an ash sapling to an oak.