Our Lady of Darkness by Bernard Capes — Read

Of so wanton and inexplicable a nature had been the assault committed on him, that for some three days succeeding it Ned could have fancied himself lying rather in a stupor of amazement than in the semi-consciousness engendered of a certain degree of pain and fever. His _contretemps_ with his uncle; the latter's more than usually uncompromising attitude of offence towards him; most of all, the strange vision of madame, with her obvious intention to insult and disable him, -- all this in the retrospect inclined him to consider himself the late victim of a delirium that was reflex to the hideous pictures painted in Paris upon his brain.

But, on the fourth morning of his retirement, finding himself awake to the humour of the situation, he knew that his distemper was retreating, and that he might claim himself for a convalescent.