CHAPTER V.
INSANITY OR EXILE.
For weeks and weeks after the terrible death of Laurens Cornwallis, the life of his sister Ruth hung on a thread. She was delirious. She cried out incessantly. “O Laurens! Laurens! beautiful angel! Come back! come back! Speak to me Laurens! Kiss me, Laurens!”
They feared her brain was going.
“If we could only make her think he had come back,” said the perplexed doctor—“create a sort of counter delusion.”
They tried it each in turn with no effect—the mother at last.
“Oh, she does not even hear me,” sobbed the mother. “Her sense of hearing must be already gone, only her sight remains. Her eyes were fixed on the door in the far end of the room, as though she expected to see him come through that door, when she calls.”
This gave the doctor a new idea.
“Then we must have some one that looks like him come through that door, in response to her call—some one that knew him and loved him and would be in full sympathy with her in regard to his death.”