Mr. Harding, whose temperate course of life was greatly advantageous to his case, had suffered comparatively little: a simple fracture of the arm, and dislocation of the collar-bone (which was the extent of his misfortune,) were, by skilful treatment and implicit obedience to professional commands, soon pronounced in a state of improvement; but a wound had been inflicted which no doctor could heal. The conviction that the woman, whose anger he had incurred, had, if not the power of producing evil, at least the power to foretell it, and that he had twice again to see her before the fulfilment of her prophecy, struck deep into his mind; and although he felt himself more at ease when he had communicated to Mrs. Harding the fact of having seen the gipsy at the moment of the accident, it was impossible for him to rally from the shock which his nerves had received. It was in vain he had tried to shake off the perpetual apprehension of again beholding her. Frederick Langdale remained for some time in a very precarious state. All visitors were excluded from his room, and a wretched space of two months passed, during which his affectionate Maria had never been allowed to see him, nor to write to, nor to hear from him. While her constitution was gradually giving way to the constant operation of solicitude and sorrow. Mr. Harding meanwhile recovered rapidly, but his spirits did not keep pace with his mending health; the dread he felt of quitting his house, the tremor excited in his breast by a knocking at the door, or the approach of a footstep, lest the intruder should be the basilisk Martha, were not to be described; and the appearance of his poor Maria did not tend to cheer the gloom which hung over him. When at length Frederick was sufficiently recovered to receive visitors, Maria was not sufficiently well to visit him: she was too rapidly sinking into an early grave, and even the physician himself appeared desirous of preparing her parents for the worst, while she, full of the symptomatic prospectiveness of disease, still talked anticipatingly of future happiness, when Frederick would be sufficiently re-established to visit her. At length, however, the doctors suggested a change of air—a suggestion instantly attended to, but, alas! too late; the weakness of the poor girl was such, that upon a trial of her strength it was found inexpedient to attempt her removal. In this terrible state, separated from him whose all she was, did the exemplary patient linger, and life seemed flickering in her flushing cheek; and her eye was sunken, and her parched lip quivered with pain.