Some ten days after May's arrival in Seamore-place, owing principally to her constant care and watchfulness, and the unremitting attention with which she devoted herself to him, Lord Forestfield was pronounced not merely to be out of danger, but well on his way to convalescence. It had been a desperate trial for May, not only as regards her bodily strength, which during her long vigils was taxed beyond its powers of endurance, but to her mind, which, so long at least as her husband's delirium continued, was kept ever on the rack. When, with his returning senses, Lord Forestfield recognised his wife, and realised all that she had done for him during his illness, he seemed, for the first time in his life, to be profoundly touched, and indeed became so excited as to give ground for fearing that, in his then weak and almost prostrate condition, he would suffer a relapse. As his strength gradually returned to him, he grew more anxious that May should be constantly in his sight, more exacting in his demands on her time and attention; and this, not in the usual querulous and complaining tone of an invalid, which he adopted towards all others, but with that yearning tenderness of which he had never previously manifested any sign. One day, as he was sitting propped up with pillows in an easy-chair, and she, at his request, was reading to him from the newspaper, he took her hand between his, still thin and gaunt, but freed now from the burning fever, and spoke to her as he had never spoken for years, as he had probably never spoken at all before. In his weak-voice there was something of the earnest fervour which took her back to the time of their first acquaintance--all his words then were tinged with the roseate hue of youth and love--what he said now was spoken falteringly, and seemed at least to bear the impress of truth. He told her that he had done her grievous wrong, and that whatever faults she might have committed he was, in the first instance, to blame for the manner in which he had neglected her and left her at the mercy of others. He acknowledged that he had been cruel, harsh, and unsympathetic, blaming his bringing-up, by which he had never been taught to bridle his passions or to look for the possibility of the non-fulfilment of any of his wishes, and he promised her that if, when his strength was fully recovered, she would remain with him, as forgiving and as loyal as she had been during his illness, he would prove to her the alteration that time and trouble had worked in him, and devote himself for the remainder of his life to secure her happiness.