oubting
whether they were telling her the truth. A shocking distrust of her
friends seemed to possess her. She shrunk when Lady Janet approached the
bedside. She shuddered when Lady Janet kissed her. She flatly refused to
let Horace see her. She asked the strangest questions about Julian Gray,
and shook her head suspiciously when they told her that he was absent
from the house. At intervals she hid her face in the bedclothes and
murmured to herself piteously, "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"
At other times her one petition was to be left alone. "I want nobody in
my room"--that was her sullen cry--"nobody in my room."

The evening advanced, and brought with it no change for the better. Lady
Janet, by the advice of Horace, sent for her own medical adviser.

The doctor shook his head. The symptoms, he said, indicated a serious
shock to the nervous system. He wrote a sedative prescription; and he
gave (with a happy choice of language) some sound and safe advice. It
amounted briefly to this: "Take her away, and try the sea-side."
Lady Janet's customary energy acted on the advice, without a moment's
needless delay. She gave the necessary directions for packing the trunks
overnight, and decided on leaving Mablethorpe House with Mercy the next
morning.

Shortly after the doctor had taken his departure a letter from Julian,
addressed to Lady Janet, was delivered by private messenger.

Beginning with the necessary apologies for the writer's absence, the
letter proceeded in these terms:

"Before I permitted my companion to see the lawyer, I felt the necessity
of consulting him as to my present position toward her first.

"I told him--what I think it only right to repeat to you--that I do not
feel justified in acting on my own opinion that her mind is deranged.
In the case of this friendless woman I want medical authority, and, more
even than that, I want some positive proof, to satisfy my conscience as
well as to confirm my view.

"Finding me obstinate on this point, the lawyer undertook to consult a
physician accustomed to the treatment of the insane, on my behalf.

"After sending a message and receiving the answer, he said, 'Bring
the lady here--in half an hour; she shall tell her story to the doctor
instead of telling it to me.' The proposal rather staggered me; I asked
how it was possible to induce her to do that. He laughed, and answered,
'I shall present the doctor as my senior partner; my senior partner wil