"Brain fever."
Catherine looked down on the ground, and thought a little before she spoke again. "You say she received a shock. Who gave her a shock?—what was it?—who was it?" and the look of a wild beast that has been robbed of its young came into her eyes, as she waited for his answer.
The doctor knew that she could easily acquire the information from other sources, so thought it best to tell her all that had occurred at once.
"The poor girl has appeared to me to have been unwell for some time, Mrs. King—to have had something on her mind, some great worry that has been destroying her peace and undermining her health."
"Oh, yes! I know all about that," exclaimed Catherine, impatiently; "but the shock—what do you mean by that?"
"The shock would not have affected her in the way it did, if she had not been in the unstrung condition I speak of, Mrs. King." Then he told her how a patient suffering from delirium tremens had been brought into the hospital, how his attendants had heard him call out the name of Mary Grimm several times in his delirium, how Mary had been brought into his ward to see if she could identify him, and how she had fainted away on seeing him.
After he had completed his narrative, Catherine rose from the chair and paced up and down the room several times, a deep frown on her brow. Then she stopped, and facing the doctor commenced to question him in a calm but abrupt manner.
"Did she recognise him?"
"I don't know; she is not in a state to explain anything yet."
"Was anybody by when she saw him?"