B---- was also very much affected, and for some way not a word was spoken. At length, fancying that he ought to attempt to console me, he spoke a few words, to which I replied, intending to answer as firmly as I could; but it was with the strangest sensation that I ever experienced that I found that I was talking incoherent nonsense; knowing what I ought to say, conscious that I was not saying it, and yet feeling it impossible so to rule my mind as to utter what I wished. B---- looked at me aghast, and I could just contrive to say "Wait a little! wait a little! I am confused and ill!" That was the last sensation and those the last words that I remember for some time. It was hardly to be expected, that rising from a sick bed, I should take such a journey, undergo such agitations, and pass through such scenes without suffering in the end. I did not exactly what is called relapse, for the illness that followed bore but little analogy to that which I had suffered before. They called it a brain fever, which I suppose means inflammation of the brain, but at all events, it kept me for three weeks on a sick bed without the use of my senses; and, when I was restored to consciousness, it seemed only to be that I might suffer the more acutely; for what was I to wake to?--the consciousness of being a murderer, the knowledge that Emily was lost to me for ever! I found myself in a small cottage at Worthing, with my French servant and my friend B---- attending me with the most devoted kindness. As soon as he found that I was able to comprehend him, B---- told me that before I reached Brighton, I had been in a state of furious delirium, raving incessantly of a hideous face that looked at me; and that consequently perceiving that it would be impossible to cross in the public steam-boat next morning, he had turned off with me from Brighton to Worthing, where he had taken the first cottage he could find. "At first," he continued, "I assumed feigned names both for yourself and me; but I perceive already by the newspapers, that it was unnecessary, as the family have announced their intention not to prosecute." My health now daily improved; but still it was very slowly, for the physician who attended me could in no way minister to the mind diseased, and in addition to deep remorse for what I had done--for sending a sinful fellow-creature to his long account, with all his worst failings hot about him--in addition to grief for the loss of her I loved, a loss which I felt to be as certain as if she no longer existed, there was yet another dreadful weight upon my mind, which overcame all powers of resistance in my heart, and rendered my recovery slow and imperfect. I never attempted to close my eyes at night without being visited by a horrid vision, the effect of an over-excited imagination, which kept me awake till two or three o'clock in the morning.