“Walter! My husband! Where is he? Where is grandfather? What has happened?” she cried out, in a confused way, as one just aroused from a sound sleep.
Jack and Mr. Dunlap stared at her for a moment in wonderment; then something in her eyes gave them the gladsome tidings, in this their hour of greatest trouble, that reason had resumed its sway over loved Lucy’s mind; she was restored to sanity. The shock had been to her heart and restored her senses, as a similar shock had deprived her of them. The experts had predicted correctly.
“Walter is in trouble, danger. I heard that policeman say murder! Save my husband, Jack! Uncle John! Where is my grandfather?”
Jack finally gathered enough of his scattered composure to reply somehow to the excited young woman. He said all that he dared say so soon after the return of reason to her distracted head.
“Be calm, Cousin Lucy! Your grandfather is absent from the city. You have been ill. Your Uncle John and I will do all in our power to aid Walter if he be in danger.”
She turned her eyes toward her Uncle John and regarded him steadily for the space of a minute, and then she whirled about and faced Jack, crying out in clear and ringing tones,
“I will not trust Uncle John. He dislikes Walter and always has, but you! you, Jack Dunlap, I trust next to my God and my good grandfather. Will you promise to aid Walter?”
“I promise, Lucy. Now be calm,” said Jack gently.
There was no madness now in Lucy’s bright, gleaming, hazel eyes; womanly anxiety as a wife was superb in its earnestness. She was grand, sublime as with the majestic grace of a queen of tragedy she swept close to her cousin, then raising herself to her greatest height, with her hand extended upward, pointing to heaven, she commanded as a sovereign might have done.