Everything connected with Naples, with me, with his journey to Italy, had dropped in some mysterious manner entirely out of his remembrance.

So completely had all late circumstances passed from his memory that, though he recognized the old priest and his own servant easily on the first days of his convalescence, he never recognized me, but regarded me with such a wistful, doubting expression, that I felt inexpressibly pained when I approached his bedside.

All his questions were about Miss Elmslie and Wincot Abbey, and all his talk referred to the period when his father was yet alive.
The doctors augured good rather than ill from this loss of memory of recent incidents, saying that it would turn out to be temporary, and that it answered the first great healing purpose of keeping his mind at ease.

I tried to believe them--tried to feel as sanguine, when the day came for his departure, as the old friends felt who were taking him home.

But the effort was too much for me.