"Why should I gossip about one sick room in another! I only wish I were as successful there as here. But there are cases which remind us rather roughly of the limits of our powers." "Can't you understand her sickness?" "Her case requires a wiser man than I. I know that the seat of the difficulty is in the mind, and I would even venture to touch the sore spot with the point of a needle. But what will that avail, if the remedy, which I also know, is not to be bought at any apothecary's?" "A disease of the mind?" "No: a simple consuming fever with a perfectly clear intellect. In short: "By angels 'tis called a heavenly bliss, By devils a woe of th' deepest abyss, While mortals exclaim 'it is love.'" "Love? Is the poor girl--" "In love, and so deeply that her life is imperiled. Oh! my dear fellow, these still waters!" "And who in the world--But to be sure, from what I know of her, she'd not confess it to you, or any other human being." "A good family doctor needs no verbal confession in such cases. We've other means of examining a feverish little heart--quiet noiseless means. At first, its true, I was on the wrong track. I imagined--mind, this is entirely between ourselves--that I myself was the fortunate object and cause of this mysterious suffering. After all, it would not have shown any want of taste in her, and with the romantic occasion of our introduction--the night when we rescued Fräulein Christiane from drowning--who would have wondered if she had at first revered me as the saving angel, then admired, and at last learned to love. And I confess the bare thought cost me several sleepless nights--until about midnight. You know what I think of love and matrimony, but my most sacred prejudices were in danger of being vanquished, when I fancied that a girl like this zaunkönig's daughter could really want me for her lawful husband. There's something about her which must make it difficult, nay impossible for an honest man ever to be faithless to her. I'm as good a conductor of heat as an iron stove, and opportunity added fuel to the flames. Under the pretext of being obliged to watch her, I daily spent an hour in her society, almost always alone; and besides, just at that time, I'd had a quarrel with my little nightingale. Adeline had been a little too enthusiastic about a handsome Hungarian. So I took advantage of the holiday thus given my heart, to make studies beside the lagune, to ascertain whether I could change my sentiments and transform myself from an admirer of ladies in general, to the adorer of one." "And in what did these studies consist?" asked Edwin forcing a smile. "That's _my_ secret," replied Marquard pathetically. "Enough I gave up the game as I saw it was lost to me; but with the zeal of jealousy searched for the man who stood in the way. My old sympathetic method didn't leave me in the lurch this time." "May one know--?"