"How is she?" said the latter. "Ah, poor girl, she is very ill!"

"But she will get better? Oh, Stonor, don't flatter me: tell me the truth!"

"Tell you the truth?--of course I shall! Well, she'll be better when she gets back to her husband."

"And how is John Huish?" and the white hand trembled inside the panel, like some leaf agitated by the wind.

"He is bad--very bad," said the doctor. "I've had a hard fight with him, for his brain has had some serious shock. Poor fellow! he has been a little queer in the head for some time past, and consulted me at intervals, but I could make nothing of it. It's a very obscure case, and I would not--I could not believe that there was anything more than fancy in his symptoms. But he was right, and it seems like a lesson to me not to be too conceited. His mind has been very impressionable, and from what I can gather he has not been carrying on as he should."

"No, no, I'm afraid not!"

"There was some sad scene with his young wife, I suppose."

[Text on pages 164 and 165 missing.]

"Well, I always think that it was a very insane, morbid proceeding, tinged with vanity, to shut yourself up as you have done these thirty years."

"I took an oath, when I found to what I was reduced, that I would never look upon the face of man again, and I have kept it."

"I should think that you were more likely to be forgiven for breaking such an oath than for keeping it," said the doctor drily.

"But I have kept it!" said Robert Millet sternly. "In a few short hours I found that I had lost all worth living for, and I retired here to die."

"Yes," said the doctor, in his bluff, dry way; "but when you found that you were so long dying, I think you might have done something useful."

There was no reply to this, and the doctor loosed the thin white hand, and began to tap the little ledge by the panel.

"I wrote down to Huish about his son's illness," he said at last.

"Yes: well?" said the recluse eagerly.

"He begged me to do all I could. He never leaves his room now. Gout or rheumatism has crippled him. Strange how things come about with the young people."

"Yes: I'm getting old now, and I wanted to feel full of forgiveness towards Huish, and that is why I took to his boy. It is hard that matters have turned out as they have."

"Very," said the doctor. "Well, I'm not going to advise, but I should like to know that you had broken your oath at last, and let light into your brain as well as into your house. Good-bye; I'll let you know how John Huish gets on."

Dr Stonor went straight to Highgate and found what seemed an improvement in his patient, for Huish was sitting up; but he seemed strangely reticent and thoughtful, and never asked any questions as to his wife or his relatives, but seemed to be dreaming over something with which his mind was filled.

Time pa.s.sed, and with closely cut hair, and a strange sallowness in his complexion, John Huish was up, and had been out times enough in the extensive garden, but there was a something in his manner that troubled the doctor a great deal, and was looked upon by him as a bad symptom.

He was always dreaming over something, and what that was he never said.

Miss Stonor conversed with him, and he was gentle and talked rationally.

He answered the doctor's questions reasonably enough, and yet, as soon as his attention was released, he was back again, dreaming over the one thing that seemed to trouble his mind.

"Will he get well?" said Miss Selina to the doctor one morning.

"I'd give something to be able to say," was the reply. "At times I think not, for I fear the impression upon his mind is that he is insane, and if a man believes that of himself, how can we get him to act like one who is sane?"

This was at breakfast-time, and the doctor soon after went out, leaving an a.s.sistant in charge.

It was a glorious afternoon, and Huish and the three patients were out in the garden, where Captain Lawdor was practising throwing biscuit, as he called it, at a stone balanced on the end of a stick. Mr Rawlinson had a table out and was writing a series of minutes on railway mismanagement; and Mr Roberts was following John Huish about as he walked up and down beneath the old red-brick wall which separated the garden from the road.

This went on for a time, and then Mr Roberts crept softly up to Huish, to whom he had not spoken since the night of the dinner, and said:

"I told you not to look at that Egyptian sorcerer. I knew it would send you mad."

"Mad!" exclaimed Huish, smiling. "I am not mad."

"Oh yes," said Mr Roberts. "You came here and asked the doctor to cure you. No man could do that if he were not mad."

"Oh, nonsense!" said Huish, looking at him strangely. "I am quite well."

Mr Roberts shook his head.

"No, you are not; I know how you feel, just like a man I knew used to feel. He always felt as if he were two; and sometimes he was one, sometimes the other. The other was the one the lawyer said was dead.

It was so sad, too, for her. What have you done with your wife?"

At last!

John Huish started as if he had been stung. That was the something he had, in a strange secretive way, tried to think of for days past--his wife; and now the mention of her sent a shock like that of electricity through his brain.

He hurried away, and began to walk up and down, growing more and more excited. His wife! Where was she? Yes, he remembered now; the mist that had shrouded his brain was dispelled, and he could think. That something like him had been and taken her away, and he was doing nothing here.

With all the cunning of an insane person he became very calm all at once, for the doctor's a.s.sistant strolled out in the garden just then, walked up to and spoke to him, and not seeing any change, went back to the house, while, glancing sharply round him, John Huish waited for an opportunity to put a plan that he had instantly matured into operation.

He had sense enough to know that he should be refused if he asked leave to go outside, so walking up and down for a few minutes, he suddenly made a run and a bound, caught the top of the wall and scrambled up, and dropped into the lane.

The captain raised a shout, and the a.s.sistant came running out, but by the time he reached the gate Huish had disappeared, taking as he did a short cut across the fields, while the a.s.sistant searched the road, and then, after fruitless efforts, hurried off to the nearest station, and made his way to Finsbury Circus. Here he broke the news to the doctor, who left him to finish his cases, and, calling Daniel, set off as fast as they could go to Westbourne Road, as being the most likely point for Huish to make for now he was free.

As soon as he had run sharply across the fields, John Huish subsided into a walk, and going along at a pretty good pace, made straight for his home.

To all appearances he was perfectly sane and in his right mind; but there was only one dominant idea there, and to fulfil this he was hurrying on. Still there was a certain amount of strange caution developed in his acts. He seemed to know that there was something wrong with him, and that he must be cautious how he spoke to people; and to this end he carefully avoided everyone who appeared to take the slightest notice of him, till he reached Westbourne Road. There he rang the bell, and the door was answered by his domestic.

The servant looked at him strangely, but said nothing, and he hurried up to his room to try and remove any traces that might strike a stranger of his having been lately ill. His mind was clear enough for that, and as he hastily bathed his face, the cold water refreshed him and he felt more himself.

He was terribly confused, though, at times, and had to ask himself why he was there.

That acted as a touchstone--Gertrude--he had come to seek his wife; he had escaped so that he might find her, for the doctor would not let him go. He told him--yes, he told him his wife was well, and he should see her soon; but it was a lie to quiet him. That devil had got her--his other self. Of course--the servant and the cabman told him so; but he must be quiet, or they would stop him. Perhaps the doctor had sent after him now.

He shuddered and gazed about him for a moment as if his mind were going beyond his control. Then, mastering himself once more, he took up his hat, opened the door, and pa.s.sed out into the road.

Volume 3, Chapter XIII.

LORD HENRY RECEIVES A TELEGRAM.

"I shall be waiting for you this evening at the Channel Hotel. It is an easy walk from the square. Ask to be shown to Number 99. If you are not there by ten o'clock, good-bye! There will be the report of a pistol heard. Without you I can bear my life no longer."