"As I have wrote, Emma was distracted: she ... _Postscript written over leaf._ * * * * * "2 a.m.--As I was throwing the sand upon these words, in order to turn the page, I heard a timid knock at my door; and going to it quickly, for I had not get begun to undress, I beheld Emma, looking more heavenly beautiful than I had ever seen her before, in her white dressing-robe made in the simple antique fashion, fastened only with a girdle under the bosom, and with her glorious hair pouring over her shoulders and almost to her knees, as I perceived when she glided back the minute afterwards, lest her husband should have opened his eyes and missed her healing presence. "'Dear friend,' she said, 'I came to tell you that my dear husband has taken the turn, and will now sleep. I cannot forgive myself for having left him to-day: I had not anticipated any increase in the fever so long as he stayed at home, or wild horses should not have dragged me. Forgive me, Nelson, for leaving you so abruptly.' With that she gave me her hands; and, looking at her tender face, I perceived that it was stained with weeping. I folded her to my heart; and presently she gently disengaged herself, and fled back to sit by Sir William's bedside through the night, to make sure of having Sir William fit on the morrow for the twenty-mile drive to Caserta, where the Queen is to join the King in the morning, in order to bring about a meeting between me and the Austrian General Mack, whom the Emperor has sent down to command the Neapolitan forces in the contemplated movement against the French in the Papal States." CHAPTER XV.--Of the Voyage to Malta, with the Account of what happened at Caserta. In writing this history of the Admiral, I had it in my mind to have written each portion as it seemed to me at the time, and not by the light of after experience; but in practice I have not always found this possible. I cannot, for instance, refrain from analysing his behaviour during our short expedition to Malta by my knowledge of how he was likely to behave under the circumstances derived from a personal study of the hero during the last seven years of his life.