In his blind fury he refused her credit; but the words, in their native tongue, which said, “Remember my scarf which you picked up here,” brought back to his memory so terrible a domestic tale, that had the earth opened a cavern in that moment before his feet, he would have leaped into it, to bury his remorse and shame. Strange, too, it proved, that he should not have ever allowed Eurotas to get possession of that family relic, but should, ever since he regained it, have kept it apart as a sacred thing; and when all else was being packed up, should have folded it up and put it in his breast. And now, in the act of drawing out his eastern dagger, he had plucked this out too, and both were found upon the floor. Dionysius, immediately after dressing the wound, and administering proper restoratives, which brought back consciousness, desired the patient to be left perfectly quiet, to see as few persons as possible, so as to prevent excitement, and to go on with the treatment which he prescribed until midnight. “I will call,” he added, “very early in the morning, when I must see my patient alone.” He whispered a few words in her ear, which seemed to do her more good than all his medicines; for her countenance brightened into an angelic smile. Fabiola had her placed in her own bed, and, allotting to her attendants the outward room, reserved to herself exclusively the privilege, as she deemed it, of nursing the servant, to whom a few months before she could hardly feel grateful for having tended her in fever. She had informed the others how the wound had been inflicted, concealing the relationship between her assailant and her deliverer. Although herself exhausted and feverish, she would not leave the bedside of the patient; and when midnight was past, and no more remedies had to be administered, she sank to rest upon a low couch close to the bed. And now what were her thoughts, when, in the dim light of a sick room, she opened her mind and heart to them? They were simple and earnest. She saw at once the reality and truth of all that her servant had ever spoken to her. When she last conversed with her, the principles which she heard with delight, had appeared to her wholly beyond practice, beautiful theories, which could not be brought to action. When Miriam had described a sphere of virtue, wherein no approbation or reward of man was to be expected, but only the approving eye of God, she had admired the idea, which powerfully seized her generous mind; but she had rebelled against its becoming the constraining rule of hourly conduct. Yet, if the stroke under which she cast herself had proved fatal, as it might easily have done, where would have been her reward? What, then, could have been her motive but that very theory, as it seemed, of responsibility to an unseen power?