Vivian said whatever he could to fortify this hope, and was glad to see Lord Glistonbury show feelings of this sort. The physician arrived, and confirmed these hopes by his favourable prognostics. In the course of the day and night her face, which had been contracted, resumed its natural appearance; she recovered the use of her arm: a certain difficulty of articulation, and thickness of speech, with what the physician called hallucination of mind, and a general feebleness of body, were all the apparent consequences of this stroke. She was not herself sensible of the nature of the attack, or clear in her ideas of any thing that had passed immediately previous to it. She had only an imperfect recollection of her daughter’s illness, and of some hurry about Mr. Vivian’s going away. She was, however, well enough to go into her dressing-room, where Vivian went to pay his respects to her, with Lord Glistonbury. By unremitting exertions, and unusual cheerfulness, Lady Sarah succeeded in quieting her mother’s confused apprehensions on her account. When out of Lady Glistonbury’s hearing, all the attendants and the physicians repeatedly expressed fear that Lady Sarah would over-fatigue and injure herself by this extraordinary energy; but her powers of body and mind seemed to rise with the necessity for exertion; and, on this great occasion, she suddenly discovered a warmth and strength of character, of which few had ever before discerned even the slightest symptoms. “Who would have expected this from Sarah?” whispered Lord Glistonbury to Vivian. “Why, her sister did not do more for me when I was ill! I always knew she loved her mother, but I thought it was in a quiet, commonplace way--Who knows but she loves me too?--or might--” She came into the room at this moment--“Sarah, my dear,” said his lordship, “where are my letters and yesterday’s papers, which I never read?--I’ll see if there be any thing in them that can interest your mother.” Lord Glistonbury opened the papers, and the first article of public news was, “a dissolution of parliament confidently expected to take place immediately.” This must put an end to Vivian’s scheme of going to town to attend his duty in parliament. “But, may be, it is only newspaper information.” It was confirmed by all Lord Glistonbury and Vivian’s private letters. A letter from his mother, which Vivian now for the first moment had time to peruse, mentioned the dissolution of parliament as certain; she named her authority, which could not be doubted; and, in consequence, she had sent down supplies of wine for an election; and she said that she would “be immediately at Castle Vivian, to keep open house and open heart for her son. Though not furnished,” she observed, “the castle would suit the better all the purposes of an election; and she should not feel any inconvenience, for her own part, let the accommodations be what they might.”