was conveyed to his bed, showing no sign of consciousness of the change made in his position.
And now began for Helen the life of a nurse. Oh! who is there fortunate enough not to know the routine of those painful days and nights of anxiety, which seem never to have had a beginning, and never to know an end—so long, if measured by the intensity of the feelings—so short, if reckoned by the progress that has been made? Fallacious hopes followed by groundless despair; the promise of recovery that had shown itself in the morning, succeeded by the sudden relapse in the evening; the medical visits bringing with them hope, and leaving behind them a sensation of blank disappointment; letters of inquiry which seem cold or importunate, and full of advice that only perplexes the anxious watcher, and requesting answers for which there is neither time nor inclination. These are the minor troubles of the day; but who can describe the faint sickening of the heart of the young wife who had hitherto seen but little illness, and who now saw it in its most fearful form? The removal from the ship brought on a return of fever, and the voice which Helen had feared she would hear no more now rang in her ears with all the harshness of delirium; but it was harshness of tone only. She heard her own name repeated again and again with words of the fondest endearment; and when the silence of weakness followed, she almost regretted the terrors of the active paroxysm.
During that night, and several that followed it, she never quitted his room: there were hired nurses in attendance, medical men always at hand, and her brother ready and anxious to take her place, but she steadfastly refused to leave her husband. She slept on a mattress placed on the floor at the side of his bed; sometimes the short sleep ended with a start, and with a vague feeling that something dreadful was taking place; sometimes with the sound sleep
