"_I_ had it once--that fever; I had it very badly. No one ever knew it, thank Heaven! I speak of it now for the first time, yet I would not willingly forget it. What a long, long time ago it seems! What a mad business it was--and ye gods! what I suffered! I can afford to laugh at it now, boy; but it wasn't a laughing matter then, I can assure you. It was just that sort of crazy business that a man or a woman drifts into without knowing it, and then wakes up suddenly, with a start, to a new life, as it were. I--poor fool that I was--fell in love with a man's voice--the sweetest voice and the most honest, I think, I've ever heard. He liked to talk to me; was good enough sometimes, when I was lonely and out of sorts, to come and read to me. Lord! the music of it all is in my ears now. A woman grows more lovely--even if she be plain she grows quite passable--but she grows more lovely in her own estimation just in proportion as a man seems to think her lovely, or seems to rate her above other women. I thought that--and had my awakening. He came to me one day and took my hand--God! what brutes men can be without knowing it!--and said he knew that I was his friend, and he wanted me to help him. He was in love with some one else; opposition had been placed in his way, and I, curiously enough, had influence. He wanted me to help him. Well, I did. I saw them married. I made a speech--a damned ridiculous speech--at their wedding, and sent everybody into fits of laughter. And all the time my heart was aching as I never thought anybody's heart could ache. So you see I know what it is, Comethup." She paced about for some time longer and then sat down and resumed her natural manner. Comethup, who had been on the point of offering some sort of consolation, was so disarmed by the ease with which she threw aside any touch of emotion she had displayed that he said nothing. "Well, boy, I want you to be happy; I'm quite sure you deserve to be. And I don't know the girl who could help falling in love with you if you set about it in the right way. But do your wooing in your own fashion; I don't want to interfere." Comethup paid another visit to the captain on the following day, announcing his coming by telegraph about an hour or so before he actually arrived. The worthy captain was, of course, delighted to see him, although probably he had his own suspicions concerning the real object of the visit. The young man, emboldened by his conversation with his aunt, and filled with a desperate longing to see 'Linda, left the captain soon after dinner and set off to find her. The captain seemed to understand the matter perfectly, and when Comethup would have offered some excuse for his departure merely clapped him on the shoulder and gently thrust him out of the house.