I came up and stood waiting for her to speak, but she kept pettishly swinging her small feet, as one who, by the action, means to signify displeasure.
‘Philippa,’ I said sternly, ‘speak to me.’
‘Well, here’s a gay old flare-up!’ cried Philippa, leaping from the chimney-piece, and folding her arms fiercely akimbo.
‘Who are you? Where’s the baby? You a brother; you’re a pretty brother! Is this the way you keep ‘pointments with a poor girl? Who killed the baby? You did—you all did it.’
Her words ran one into the other, as with an eloquence, which I cannot hope to reproduce (and indeed my excellent publisher would not permit it for a moment), she continued to dance derisively at me, and to heap reproaches of the most vexatious and frivolous nature on my head.
‘Philippa,’ I remarked at last, ‘you frivol too much.’
A sullen look settled on her face, and, with the aid of a chair, she reseated herself in her former listless, drooping attitude upon the chimney-piece.
On beholding these symptoms, on hearing these reproaches, a great wave of joy swept over my heart. Manifestly, Philippa was indeed, as Mrs. Thompson had said, ‘as mad as a hatter.’ Whatever she might have done did not count, and was all right. We would plead insanity.
She had fallen a victim to a mental disease, the source of which I have no hesitation in saying has not yet been properly investigated. So far as I know there is no monograph on the subject, or certainly I would have read it up carefully for the purpose of this Christmas Annual. I cannot get on without a mad woman in my stories, and if I can’t find a proper case in the medical books, why, I invent one, or take it from the French. This one I have invented.
The details of Philippa’s case, though of vast and momentous professional interest, I shall reserve for a communication to some journal of Science.