Strangely better." She removed her hand gently from mine, and with an involuntary modest shrinking turned towards Mrs.Ashleigh, drawing her mother towards herself, so that she became at once hidden from me.
Satisfied that there was here no delirium, nor even more than the slight and temporary fever which often accompanies a sudden nervous attack in constitutions peculiarly sensitive, I retired noiselessly from the room, and went, not into that which had been occupied by the ill-fated Naturalist, but down-stairs into the drawing-room, to write my prescription.

I had already sent the servant off with it to the chemist's before Mrs.Ashleigh joined me.
"She seems recovering surprisingly; her forehead is cooler; she is perfectly self-possessed, only she cannot account for her own seizure,--cannot account either for the fainting or the agitation with which she awoke from sleep." "I think I can account for both.

The first room in which she entered--that in which she fainted--had its window open; the sides of the window are overgrown with rank creeping plants in full blossom.

Miss Ashleigh had already predisposed herself to injurious effects from the effluvia by fatigue, excitement, imprudence in sitting out at the fall of a heavy dew.

The sleep after the fainting fit was the more disturbed, because Nature, always alert and active in subjects so young, was making its own effort to right itself from an injury.