Eugene shared his mother’s feeling. Trifling and insignificant now appeared the issues which had so deeply moved him. If he could not entirely forget that Dr. Bilks was tricky and politic,--if he could not entirely banish from his mind the belief, which a few days before he had entertained, that the physician was a villain, conspiring against the reputation and happiness of his best friend,--if he could not forget these things, he forgave them, and it was painful to think of them. In the hands of Dr. Bilks was the precious life of Julia, and it seemed like sacrilege to doubt or suspect him. Dick Birch went to Pine Hill again. It was like a tomb to him. He loved Julia; and for her sake he was content to let the shadows hang over himself. Even he, the wronged one, could forget that the doctor was a villain. Though he would have preferred that some other physician should attend the sick one in her perilous condition, he accepted the fact as he found it, and confided in Dr. Bilks’s skill and devotion, as others did. A week wore slowly and painfully away, not in days or hours, but in moments; for each instant was burdened with its own doubts and fears. Dr. Bilks went to Pine Hill half a dozen times a day, and spent all his nights there. He seemed never to tire, never to need the boon of slumber. He had a room next to Julia’s, and hardly an hour passed without a visit to her bedside. He watched her as a mother watches her dying infant. He bent over her, and listened to her labored breathing, careful to detect the first symptoms of change for better or worse. In the library and the drawing-room he never spoke of the events attending the murder; they seemed to be forgotten by all. As he crept with soft step to the sick room, it would have been difficult to believe that he was not an angel of mercy to that household; that a thought of cunning or malice ever crossed his mind. Mrs. Hungerford spoke kindly, tenderly of him, and even Eugene and Dick could not help calling to mind that nothing had been absolutely proved against the doctor. Julia’s fever reached its crisis. She was liable to pass away at any moment, the doctor said. Those in the house hardly dared to breathe, hardly dared to move, lest a rude current or a grating sound should sever from the body the spirit that seemed only to be hesitating in its flight. Dr. Bilks sat by the bedside. The all-absorbing solicitude of the family was fully shared by him. He gave the medicines and restoratives with his own hand. Other patients, farther removed from the waiting tomb, were forgotten and neglected. All his thought and all his time, all his study and all his anxiety, were devoted to the fair patient whose loving soul seemed to be floating between heaven and earth, and knowing not whether to flee away to the mansions of the blessed, or linger yet longer with the loved ones below.