I retreated to the library and wrote a letter to an old medical gentleman who was long my mother's adviser and mine. I set my position before him with the bluntness I knew he relished, and asked him if he could oblige me with the name of any medical man who he thought would have leisure and skill enough to carry out my stratagem. He sent me a long reply, saying he had spoken to a friend who had made the treatment of insanity his study, who would be happy to carry out my wishes. To obviate all chance of exciting my wife's suspicions he advised me to come to London and settle the programme; "for," he continued, "madness is often subtle enough to mislead the most practised observer, and it would therefore be absolutely necessary that Dr. F----'s visit to your house should be so contrived as to seem perfectly consistent with the excuse for his visit which you will contrive." I saw the wisdom of this and determined to go to London. As some pretence for my absence was needful, I pretended that I had received a letter on a business matter of great urgency. A large sum, I said, was at stake, and my presence in town was imperative. Geraldine was very reluctant to let me go. Her large eyes filled, and her beauty became mournful, as though some great sorrow had entered her heart. "I shall be counting the hours, day and night, until you return," she said. "But how blank the time will be without you! I shall not care to eat or drink, or go into the garden. Is it not you who make all those flowers beautiful, and this home dear and sweet to me as heaven?" "But I will not be long gone, Geraldine. And do you not know that little separations like these sweeten love, as the clouds in the sky make the sunshine more brilliant when their shadows pass?" "Our love does not want brightening," she answered, with a sob. "But since you must go, I will pray to the Blessed Virgin to watch over you and bring you safe back to me; for though you do not love her as I do, she loves you and will never forsake you." I kissed her, and in a few hours after we parted. I reached London late at night, and next morning drove to the house of my friend. He received me very cordially. I learned to my regret that Dr. F---- had been suddenly summoned to the death-bed of a near relation, and was not likely to return for three days. I thought more of Geraldine than myself. But my friend consoled me by saying that my absence might benefit her; anxiety for my return would give definite occupation to her mind; the longer indeed my absence was protracted the better, for fear and hope would steady by their weight the vibrations of her reason, while expectancy would serve as a leader to her thoughts, marshal them and keep them in a kind of logical order.