There was a change, and not a favorable one, before daybreak. The patient, from mutterings and restless starts, passed into violent delirium, laughing, crying, and singing in a style so opposed to the prescribed diagnosis of her case, as to lash the provincial doctor to his wits' end, and extinguish in Aunt Rachel's sanguine heart the faint hope to which she had clung until now. Herbert, awakened finally by the turbulent sounds from the room he had been told must be kept perfectly quiet, jumped up, and showed himself, with disordered hair and blinking eyes, in the door of communication, just as Mabel struggled to rise, and pleaded weepingly with those who held her down that they would restore her child to her. “I had her in my arms not a moment ago!” she insisted. “See! the print of her little head is here on my breast! You have taken her away among you! I saw it all--those who ordered that it should be done and those who did it, when I was too weak to hold her, or to keep them back!” And passing from the height of furious invective to deadly and earnest calm, she told them off upon her fingers. “Clara Aylett! Rosa Tazewell! Winston Aylett! (he married Clara Louise Dorrance, you know!) Herbert Dorrance! JULIUS LENNOX!” The household was astir by this time, and Mrs. Aylett entered from the hall as her brother did from his bedroom. There was but one spectator who was sufficiently composed to note and marvel at the scared look exchanged by the two at the sound of the last name. This was Mr. Aylett, who, from his position behind his wife, had an excellent view of all the actors in the exciting tableau before she fell back, swooning, in his arms. He was alone with her in their chamber when she revived, and the earliest effort of her restored consciousness was to seize both his hands in hers, and scan his face searchingly--it would seem agonizingly--until his fond smile dispelled the unspoken dread. “Ah!” she murmured, hiding her face upon his bosom, “she is still alive, then! I thought--I thought”--a mighty sob--“Don't despise your weak, silly wife, darling! but it was very terrible! I believed it was the last struggle, and was appalled at the sight. And my poor Herbert! he was frightfully overcome. Did you notice him? Will you send him to me, dear? I can soothe him better than any one else--prepare him for what is, I fear, inevitable. I shall not give way again to my terrors.” The brother and sister were still together when word was brought, two hours later that Mabel had fallen into a profound sleep--a good omen, the doctor said. “Thank Heaven!” ejaculated Herbert, fervently, his eyes softening until he turned away to conceal his emotion.