"Is she in her right mind? can she recognize people?"

"Hardly yet; the fever is still on her, but she does not exhibit much delirium."

"So the 'shock' is dead?"

"The unfortunate Mr. Hudson, if that is what you mean, is dead, but I don't consider the shock of seeing him was the real cause of your niece's illness. It would have come sooner or later without that."

"Indeed! Then what do you consider was the cause, Dr. Duncan?"

"As I told you the last time you were here, Mrs. King, there is something on her mind."

"There is," said Catherine, "and I think I know what it is." She spoke irritably, as the thought of the love which she imagined existed between Mary and the barrister rose to her mind.

"And until that something is taken off her mind she will never recover,"

continued the doctor.

"The something is gone now, Dr. Duncan," she said, looking straight into his eyes.

"I hope that is so," he replied doubtfully.

"What a fool the man must be not to understand me," thought Catherine; but the doctor had very good reasons to know that it was not love for Tom Hudson that weighed on the young girl's mind.

"Well! let us go and see Mary now," she said.

The girl had been placed in a small private room by herself. When they came to it the door was opened by the nurse who was in charge of the patient.

Catherine looked keenly at the young woman, then turning to Dr. Duncan, exclaimed:

"I thought you told me the other day that Miss Riley was nursing my niece."

"She has been nursing her," replied the doctor, "but we have sent her away for a holiday. She has been much overworked lately, and is far from well."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Catherine.

"Yes, she is not at all well, and her anxiety about your niece, who is a great friend of hers, seems to have upset her very much."

This information very much puzzled Catherine. "Susan is not the person to get overworked and ill," she reflected, "and still less the person to get anxious about a friend, and she's gone off without giving me any notice. There is some mystery in all this, but I will get to the bottom of it."

She entered the room and walked softly up to the side of the bed.

The room was darkened, but there was sufficient light to enable her to clearly distinguish the features of the sick girl.

Mary was lying there sleeping peacefully. She had been in this condition for some hours. It was the first natural and refreshing sleep that had come to her fevered brain since her attack. Nature was working her remedy in her own fashion.

Catherine stooped and looked intently at the quiet face. She saw that it was pinched and white and that a circle of dark purple surrounded the closed eyelids.

She also noticed how thin had become the arm on which the head was lying, the poor head off which all the beautiful hair had been shorn close.

But there was a happy smile on the half-parted lips of the sleeping girl, her dreams were sweet.

Catherine looked at her for several minutes without moving or speaking.

All her anger and jealousy melted away now, before her great pity and her great love. She asked herself reproachfully how she could have harboured one hard thought about her darling. The poor child could not help loving the man who had befriended her, and now he was dead. It was all the more inc.u.mbent on herself to cherish and console the poor girl in her affliction.

At last she made a sign to the doctor that she was ready to go, and they left the room with silent tread.

She did not speak till they were once more in the waiting-room, then she asked, simply:

"How often may I see her?"

"Every day," he replied.

"Then I will come every day, and oh, Dr. Duncan!"--she seized his hand pa.s.sionately--"I can see you are a good man. She is all the world to me.

Do your best to make her well again, spare no pains, I implore you! But of course you will do all that; pardon my folly, but I love her so much, I forget what I am saying."

"You can rely on me to do my best I think, Mrs. King," he replied, as he pressed her hand.

So Catherine came every day to the hospital, sitting by and ministering to the sick girl when she happened to be awake, or if that was not the case, contenting herself with one long, yearning look at her sleeping form.

The fever left Mary in a very weak and precarious condition.

Her reason did not wholly return to her. Her memory of everything that had pa.s.sed was very imperfect, and came only in flashes. She seemed to have forgotten all about the Secret Society. She had no remembrance of having stood by the barrister's death-bed and heard Susan's cold-blooded confession. She even could only recognize in a vague way the friends she had known before her illness.

But all that occurred around her during her convalescence was written indelibly on her memory. She did not forget the slightest incident.

So, as all that did occur around her at this period, as all her experiences consisted merely of the kind attentions of her friends, doctors, and nurses, her mind was occupied entirely by the consciousness of all this sympathetic care. A sense of boundless grat.i.tude possessed her; it was the one idea or emotion of the poor feeble intellect.

It moved to tears the most callous of her nurses, hardened to pitiful sights, to see how grateful the girl was for every little attention. In an imbecile way, she would fondle and stroke with her thin hand anyone who performed some slight service for her. Her eyes swam with love as they followed the movements of all those kind people. All the pa.s.sions and sorrows and fears seemed to have departed from the weakened mind, leaving only this gentle love.

Sometimes, but rarely, her expression would suddenly change; a look of terror would come to her eyes; she would start up in her bed, staring wildly and pointing at some imaginary object. It seemed to always a.s.sume the same form; for she would cry whenever it appeared to her: "Oh! there is the shadow again--the black shadow!" or words to the same effect.

For days after one of these attacks, she would be silent and sullen, and pay no heed whatever to the events and people around her.

Dr. Duncan noticed that these painful relapses would nearly always originate when Catherine King was by her. Mary seemed to be fonder of her adopted aunt than of any other of the people that she saw. She would shower her caresses on her as she would on no one else, though she only half recognized the woman as one who had known her and been kind to her before her illness.

But it happened sometimes that she would gaze fixedly into the stern, pale face, as if trying to recall to mind some forgotten a.s.sociation; she would look puzzled, draw her hand across her forehead, turn her eyes away with a sad and pensive expression, and at last be seized by the imaginary horror of the shadow that I have described.

Sometimes, too, the sight of Dr. Duncan seemed to awake in her some dormant memories; but in this case, after gazing at him in the same earnest, puzzled way, not a look of horror but a wonderful smile of love would come to her face; and she would stroke his hand caressingly, in a simple, artless fashion, making the strong man himself feel as if he could scarce prevent himself from bursting into pa.s.sionate tears over her.

But Catherine King, led off the scent by the episode of Tom Hudson, never for a moment suspected that any tender relations had existed between Mary and Dr. Duncan, though she was rather surprised on one occasion to hear the crazy girl--who was in one of her affectionate moods--call him "Harry," which, by the way, she had never done when in her right senses.

Seeing how Mrs. King's presence occasionally produced an injurious effect on his patient, Dr. Duncan persuaded her to diminish the frequency of her visits.

Mary's strength gradually returned, till at last, after she had been laid up for two months, it was decided that she could leave the hospital with safety.

So one afternoon, Dr. Duncan called on Mrs. King to inform her of this, and was shown into the little parlour where the heads of the Secret Society were wont to hold their councils.

As he waited for her to come into the room, he picked up a book from the table and read a page or two of it to while away the time. It was a pamphlet on some social question published by the "Free Thought a.s.sociation." He threw it down in disgust. "Yes! I must get Mary out of this house," he said to himself. "This is no fit place for her."