"Where is she gone, Madeline?" he at length breathed, in a scarcely audible whisper. "Only to my mother's room," replied Madeline, in accents scarcely louder. "And tell me where we are?" he added, after another pause. "At Geneva, dearest Alfred. But you must not speak." "At Geneva!" he repeated, then lay still a very long time, as if endeavouring to recall past events: and she noted with alarm, that pale though he was, after his long illness, a faint flush, was overspreading his brow. He feebly grasped her arm, and looked in her face with an earnestness of expression which she perfectly understood. "No! no!" she replied, "she was only ill--faint--but she is now quite well, but indeed, you must not speak, dearest Alfred." "Madeline! is all this true?" "Yes, quite true: and now, dear Alfred, you must lay still till the doctor comes." He tried to obey her for a time. "I cannot, Madeline," he at length whispered, and then, though much exhausted, he continued in broken accents, "the desire--to know--how--it has all happened--will hurt me more--than listening to your--sweet--voice.--So tell me all--and then--I will be composed." Madeline, judging that of the two it was better he should listen to her than persist in endeavouring to speak himself, replied in the softest of whispers, shading the light of the fire from his face: "Why, when my mother saw that she had both you and Caroline to nurse, she wrote to us to come here. But, by the time we came, we found dear Caroline so much recovered, that she was nursing both you and my mother, who had then become ill herself from fatigue. But she is now quite well again," she added, seeing Alfred look around. "And she has written to Lady Palliser, and obtained her permission for Caroline to stay with us while we remain abroad, that she may travel home with our party. And now, indeed, I will not speak another word, so you must lay still." Here the appearance of Lady Arden, and Aunt Dorothea, and soon after of the doctor, relieved Madeline from the difficult task of keeping her refractory patient in order. CHAPTER XXII. From day to day, as Alfred became stronger and less unfit for prolonged conversation, his kind parent had detailed to him all the interesting particulars attendant on the illness and recovery of our heroine. Her deep swoon had not, either at the first or second time of seizure, been a mere common faint; but had, on both occasions, more especially the last, partaken of the nature of those trances in which persons have been known to present for days so completely the appearance of death, as to have been carried by grieving relations to the grave; yet to have subsequently recovered, and lived for many years. Whether a more skilful doctor might, in Caroline's case, have detected the difference, we cannot pretend to say.