It is possible that towards the close of his life he suffered occasionally from hallucination, though I could not positively affirm even so much; but this was only when his health had been completely undermined by causes which are very difficult to analyse.
When I first knew him at Oxford he was a strong man physically as well as mentally; open-hearted, and of a merry and genial temperament.
At the same time he was, like most cultured persons--and especially musicians,--highly strung and excitable.

But at a certain point in his career his very nature seemed to change; he became reserved, secretive, and saturnine.

On this moral metamorphosis followed an equally startling physical change.

His robust health began to fail him, and although there was no definite malady which doctors could combat, he went gradually from bad to worse until the end came.
The commencement of this extraordinary change coincided, I believe, almost exactly with his discovery of the Stradivarius violin; and whether this was, after all, a mere coincidence or something more it is not easy to say.

Until a very short time before his death neither Miss Maltravers nor I had any idea how that instrument had come into his possession, or I think something might perhaps have been done to save him.
Though towards the end of his life he spoke freely to his sister of the finding of the violin, he only told her half the story, for he concealed from her entirely that there was anything else in the hidden cupboard at Oxford.