"No time should be lost in adopting that step," responded the doctor. "I am about to visit a sick nobleman in the neighborhood of the captain's office: we will proceed so far in each other's company." The young count summoned his page to attend upon him, and then quitted the mansion in company with the physician. In the meantime Nisida had retired to her own apartment, where she threw herself into a seat, and gave vent to the dreadful emotions which had for the last hour been agitating within her bosom. She wept--oh! she wept long and bitterly: it was terrible and strange to think how that woman of iron mind now yielded to the outpourings of her anguish. Some time elapsed ere she even attempted to control her feelings; and then her struggle to subdue them was as sudden and energetic as her grief had a moment previously been violent and apparently inconsolable. Then she recollected the note which Dr. Duras had slipped into her hand, and which she had concealed in her bosom; and she hastened to peruse it. The contents ran as follows: "In accordance with your request, my noble-hearted and much-enduring friend, I have consulted eminent lawyers in respect to the will of the late Count of Riverola. The substance of their opinion is unanimously this: The estates are inalienably settled on yourself, should you recover the faculties of hearing and speaking at any time previous to your brother's attainment of the age of thirty; and should you enter into possession of the estates, and allow your brother to enjoy the whole or greater part of the revenues, in direct contradiction to the spirit of your father's will, the estates would become liable to confiscation by his highness the duke. In this case your brother and yourself would alike be ruined. "Now, the advice that these lawyers give is this: A memorial should be addressed to his highness, exhibiting that you refuse to undergo any surgical treatment or operation for the restoration of the faculties of hearing and speech, inasmuch as you would not wish to deprive your brother of the enjoyment of the estates nor of the title conferred by their possession: that you therefore solicit a decree, confirming his title of nobility, and dispensing with the prerogative of confiscation on the part of the prince, should you recover the faculties of hearing and speech, and act in opposition to the will of your late father in respect to the power of alienating the estates from your own possession.