"I hastened to repair my negligence, and wrote her a most penitent letter half in earnest, half in jest, accusing myself of the darkest crimes towards my faithful little sister, protesting that she was a thousand times too kind to me a petrified egotist whose very heart had been turned to stone, among skeletons and anatomical preparations. Her answer was full of loving kindness, and after that our fraternal intercourse seemed re-established on the old footing. "Then she was fourteen years of age. On her fifteenth birthday, I passed my examination for a doctor's degree and we exchanged merry congratulations by telegraph. "Then I travelled during a year with you for a companion, and you will remember that the letters I received from home often made me slightly uneasy. "My mother wrote that Ellen was not well; she did not complain, but her altered looks only too visibly testified to her sufferings. The old family physician looked rather grave about it. Now I was well acquainted with this good old gentleman. He was a strict adherent of the old school, and greatly prejudiced against the stethoscope, otherwise he had the reputation of much experience in diagnostics, and of great caution, and attention. "Still this could not tranquillize me, and my parents who believed me to be the greatest medical genius in the world, expressed a strong desire, that if I could possibly get away, I should hasten home and have a consultation with the old doctor. So I determined, as you know to quit my studies in Paris--to hurry home, and decide for myself if all was as it should be.