I owed it to Mrs. Mozeen's true interest in me to tell her what had happened. The same day I wrote to her. I also mentioned what the doctor had said, and asked her to call on him, and ascertain if the prescriptions had been shown to the chemist, and if any mistake had been made. A more innocently intended letter than this never was written. And yet there are people who have declared that it was inspired by suspicion of Mrs. Mozeen! EIGHTH EPOCH. WHETHER I was so weakened by illness as to be incapable of giving my mind to more than one subject for reflection at a time (that subject being now the extraordinary recovery of my health)--or whether I was preoccupied by the effort, which I was in honor bound to make, to resist the growing attraction to me of Susan's society--I cannot presume to say. This only I know: when the discovery of the terrible position toward Rothsay in which I now stood suddenly overwhelmed me, an interval of some days had passed. I cannot account for it. I can only say--so it was. Susan was in the room. I was wholly unable to hide from her the sudden change of color which betrayed the horror that had overpowered me. She said, anxiously: "What has frightened you?" I don't think I heard her. The play was in my memory again--the fatal play, which had wound itself into the texture of Rothsay's life and mine. In vivid remembrance, I saw once more the dramatic situation of the first act, and shrank from the reflection of it in the disaster which had fallen on my friend and myself. "What has frightened you?" Susan repeated. I answered in one word--I whispered his name: "Rothsay!" She looked at me in innocent surprise. "Has he met with some misfortune?" she asked, quietly. "Misfortune"--did she call it? Had I not said enough to disturb her tranquillity in mentioning Rothsay's name? "I am living!" I said. "Living--and likely to live!" Her answer expressed fervent gratitude. "Thank God for it!" I looked at her, astonished as she had been astonished when she looked at me. "Susan, Susan," I cried--"must I own it? I love you!" She came nearer to me with timid pleasure in her eyes--with the first faint light of a smile playing round her lips. "You say it very strangely," she murmured. "Surely, my dear one, you ought to love me? Since the first day when you gave me my French lesson--haven't I loved You?" "You love _me?_" I repeated. "Have you read--?" My voice failed me; I could say no more. She turned pale. "Read what?" she asked. "My letter." "What letter?" "The letter I wrote to you before we were married."