Meantime, my path plainly is to do what I can for the poor lady's
benefit."

Mr. Gray visited his patient shortly after Mr. Middlemas's departure--as
soon, indeed, as he could be admitted. He found her in violent
agitation. Gray's experience dictated the best mode of relief and
tranquillity. He caused her infant to be brought to her. She wept over
it for a long time, and the violence of her agitation subsided under the
influence of parental feelings, which, from her appearance of extreme
youth, she must have experienced for the first time.

The observant physician could, after this paroxysm, remark that his
patient's mind was chiefly occupied in computing the passage of the
time, and anticipating the period when the return of her husband--if
husband he was--might be expected. She consulted almanacks, enquired
concerning distances, though so cautiously as to make it evident she
desired to give no indication of the direction of her companion's
journey, and repeatedly compared, her watch with those of others;
exercising, it was evident, all that delusive species of mental
arithmetic by which mortals attempt to accelerate the passage of Time
while they calculate his progress. At other times she wept anew over her
child, which was by all judges pronounced as goodly an infant as needed
to be seen; and Gray sometimes observed that she murmured sentences to
the unconscious infant, not only the words, but the very sound and
accents of which were strange to him, and which, in particular, he knew
not to be Portuguese.

Mr. Goodriche, the Catholic priest, demanded access to her upon one
occasion. She at first declined his visit, but afterwards received it,
under the idea, perhaps, that he might have news from Mr. Middlemas, as