To the surprise of every individual in the mansion, who had been made acquainted with the summons sent by the painter to his late hostess, it was answered in less than an hour by the appearance at the door of Elsie herself. She was followed by the little negro wench, bearing a bundle of linen and other apparel, and in a short time was inducted into the sick chamber, from which she contrived, before many hours, to expel dame Rachel, whom she had found listening very curiously to the sleeping murmurs of the sufferer, as well as all the officious auxiliaries. Indeed, she betrayed some inclination at first to be as free even with the physician, who had been easily prevailed upon to remain all night at the Folly, while his friends returned to the village; but the young man became so extremely ill in the course of the night, that she soon pretermitted her scruples, and was glad to receive the doctor's assistance in quelling the threatened brain-fever. This remarkable repugnance of the old woman to divide with any one the labours of watching over the stranger's couch, excited no little surprise among the domestics, and seemed to them to attach a degree of mysterious importance to his character, which none had dreamed of attaching before. Long and anxiously, in consequence, did the good Aunt Rachel and her daughter Phoebe, in the dearth of all better occupation, apply their ears to the chamber door, and their eyes to the key-hole, in the hope that some murmur of the sick man, some whisper of his privileged attendants, or perhaps some movement in the room, might give a clew to the enigma, of the existence of which every circumstance now left them still more strongly convinced. Thus, they persuaded themselves that in the delirium, which all night long oppressed the painter's brain, he was betraying divers dreadful secrets, not at all to his interest to be generally known; and they demonstrated also to their entire satisfaction, that Elsie Bell, who had acquired by some witchcraft or other a complete knowledge of the young stranger's history, was imparting it to the physician, coupled with many injunctions on the one hand, and as many promises on the other, of honourable secrecy. Nay, they both affirmed, in after days, that they distinctly heard Dr. Merribody, in reply to some question or appeal of Elsie, say, with a manner highly characteristic of his dignified sense of honour, "The secrets of the sick room are as sacred as those of the confessional; and as for a doctor, Mrs. Bell, why you must know, we are all as mum as blacksnakes. A snake was the ancient symbol of physic, you know; because that's an animal which, if it don't _hold_ its tongue, never makes any great noise with it!" They observed, too, as they surveyed her through the key-hole, that Elsie's countenance was darkened and troubled in an unusual degree; and once, they thought, they saw her shedding tears. However, they