The Threatening Eye

by E. F. Knight

Her reason did not wholly return to her. Her memory of everything that had passed was very imperfect, and came only in flashes. She seemed to have forgotten all about the Secret Society. She had no remembrance of having stood by the barrister's death-bed and heard Susan's cold-blooded confession. She even could only recognize in a vague way the friends she had known before her illness.

But all that occurred around her during her convalescence was written indelibly on her memory. She did not forget the slightest incident.

So, as all that did occur around her at this period, as all her experiences consisted merely of the kind attentions of her friends, doctors, and nurses, her mind was occupied entirely by the consciousness of all this sympathetic care. A sense of boundless gratitude possessed her; it was the one idea or emotion of the poor feeble intellect.

It moved to tears the most callous of her nurses, hardened to pitiful sights, to see how grateful the girl was for every little attention. In an imbecile way, she would fondle and stroke with her thin hand anyone who performed some slight service for her. Her eyes swam with love as they followed the movements of all those kind people. All the passions and sorrows and fears seemed to have departed from the weakened mind, leaving only this gentle love.

Sometimes, but rarely, her expression would suddenly change; a look of terror would come to her eyes; she would start up in her bed, staring wildly and pointing at some imaginary object. It seemed to always assume the same form; for she would cry whenever it appeared to her: "Oh! there is the shadow again—the black shadow!" or words to the same effect.

For days after one of these attacks, she would be silent and sullen, and pay no heed whatever to the events and people around her.

Dr. Duncan noticed that these painful relapses would nearly always originate when Catherine King was by her. Mary seemed to be fonder of her adopted aunt than of any other of the people that she saw. She would shower her caresses on her as she would on no one else, though she only half recognized the woman as one who had known her and been kind to her before her illness.

But it happened sometimes that she would gaze fixedly into the stern, pale face, as if trying to recall to mind some forgotten association; she would look puzzled, draw her hand across her forehead, turn her eyes away with a sad and pensive expression, and at last be seized by the imaginary horror of the shadow that I have described.

Sometimes, too, the sight of Dr. Duncan seemed to awake in her some dormant memories; but in this case, after gazing at him in the same earnest, puzzled way, not a look of horror but a wonderful smile of love would come to her face; and she would stroke his hand caressingly, in a simple, artless fashion, making the strong man himself feel as if he could scarce prevent himself from bursting into passionate tears over her.

But Catherine King, led off the scent by the episode of Tom Hudson, never for a moment suspected that any tender relations had existed between Mary and Dr. Duncan, though she was rather surprised on one occasion to hear the crazy girl—who was in one of her affectionate moods—call him "Harry," which, by the way, she had never done when in her right senses.