She flew through the chambers to search for her in vain,--the hireling had caught Gionetta's fears, and vanished.

What was to be done?
The case was urgent,--the doctor had declared not a moment should be lost in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her father,--she must go herself! She crept back into the room,--the anodyne seemed already to have taken benign effect; the patient's eyes were closed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep.

She stole away, threw her veil over her face, and hurried from the house.
Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind of light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless, wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiar instincts and inclinations.

It was not sleep,--it was not delirium; it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity in the frame, to which it gives a false and hectic vigour.

Pisani missed something,--what, he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the two wants most essential to his mental life,--the voice of his wife, the touch of his Familiar.