He was terribly pale, and the doctors feared he had been attacked by some strange fever.
The date of the letter was the 25th of October, fixing the night of the 23d as the time of Sir John's first attack.

The coincidence of the date with that of the day missing in Temple's diary was significant, but it was not needed now to convince me that Sir John's ruin was due to something that occurred on that fatal night at Naples.
The question that Dr.Frobisher had asked Miss Maltravers when he was first called to see her brother in London returned to my memory with an overwhelming force.

"Had Sir John been subjected to any mental shock; had he received any severe fright ?" I knew now that the question should have been answered in the affirmative, for I felt as certain as if Sir John had told me himself that he _had_ received a violent shock, probably some terrible fright, on the night of the 23d of October.

What the nature of that shock could have been my imagination was powerless to conceive, only I knew that whatever Sir John had done or seen, Adrian Temple and Jocelyn had done or seen also a century before and at the same place.

That horror which had blanched the face of all three men for life had fallen perhaps with a less overwhelming force on Temple's seasoned wickedness, but had driven the worthless Jocelyn to the cloister, and was driving Sir John to the grave.
These thoughts as they passed through my mind filled me with a vague alarm.