reason to complain of his conduct yourself?"

Madame Fontaine lifted her hands in gently-expressed protest. "Oh, dear,
no--not to complain! To pity our afflicted Jack, and to feel, perhaps,
that your irresistible influence over him might be required--no more."

"You are very good," said Mrs. Wagner dryly. "At the same time, I beg you
to accept my excuses--not only for Jack, but for myself. I found him so
well behaved, and so capable of restraining himself in London, that I
thought I was running no risk in bringing him with me to Frankfort."

"Pray say no more, dear madam--you really confuse me. I am the innocent
cause of his little outbreak. I most unfortunately reminded him of the
time when he lived with us at Wurzburg--and in that way I revived one of
his old delusions, which even your admirable treatment has failed to
remove from his mind."

"May I ask what the delusion is, Madame Fontaine?"

"One of the commonest delusions among insane persons, Mrs. Wagner--the
delusion that he has been poisoned. Has he ever betrayed it in your
presence?"

"I heard something of it," Mrs. Wagner answered, "from the superintendent
at the madhouse in London."

"Ah, indeed? The superintendent merely repeated, I suppose, what Jack had
told him?"

"Exactly. I was careful not to excite him, by referring to it myself,
when I took him under my charge. At the same time, it is impossible to
look at his hair and his complexion, without seeing that some serious
accident must have befallen him."

"Most unquestionably! He is the victim, poor creature--not of poison--but
of his own foolish curiosity, in my husband's surgery, and you see the
result. Alas! I cannot give you the scientific reasons for it."

"I shouldn't understand them, Madame Fontaine, if you could."

"Ah, dear lady, you kindly say so, because you are unwilling to humiliate
me. Is there anything Jack may have said to you about me, which seems to
require an explanation--if I can give it?"

She slipped in this question, concealing perfectly the anxiety that
suggested it, so far as her voice and her eyes were concerned. But the
inner agitation rose to the surface in a momentary trembling of her lips.

Slight as it was, that sign of self-betrayal did not escape Mrs. Wagner's
keen observation. She made a cautious reply. "On the contrary," she said,
"from what Jack has told me, the conclusion is plain that you have really
done him a service. You have succeeded in curing that