It seemed false to Lionel, the appearing what he was not. He was his
true self at night only, when he could turn, and toss, and groan out his
trouble at will. But, when illness attacked him, and he had no strength
of body to throw off his pain of mind, then he found how completely the
blow had shattered him. It seemed to Lionel, in his sane moments, in the
intervals of his delirium, that it would be far happier to die, than to
wake up again to renewed life, to bear about within him that
ever-present sorrow. Whether the fever--it was not brain fever, though
bordering closely upon it--was the result of this state of mind, more
than of the sun-stroke, might be a question. Nobody knew anything of
that inward state, and the sun-stroke got all the blame--save, perhaps,
from Lionel himself. He may have doubted.
One day Jan called in to see him. It was in August. Several weeks had
elapsed since the commencement of his illness, and he was so far
recovered as to be removed by day to a sitting-room on a level with his
chamber--a wondrously pretty sitting-room over Lady Verner's
drawing-room, but not so large as that, and called "Miss Decima's room.
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