But to his questionings she would only reply that she felt nervous, and suffered from fearful dreams. This was the truth, though she concealed the cause of the disease.
There was one dream which occurred to her almost nightly, so full of horror that she came to be afraid of going to bed, knowing what she was to suffer. In this dream she found herself a prisoner at the Bar in a dingy Law Court. She was on her trial as being an accomplice in an awful crime. She looked around; and on the faces of the judge, and lawyers, and jury, and witnesses, and lookers on, she saw only an intense loathing expressed. No sympathy, no pity, hate alone was felt for the abominable murderer of babies. Susan Riley, too, was standing in the witness-box, her eyes glittering with malice, giving Queen's evidence, nay, more, bearing false witness against her, weaving tissues of lies around her that there was no disproving, cunningly making her to appear more detestable a wretch than any criminal that had ever been tried before in that accursed place through all its long annals of crime. And her husband was there also, pale, haggard, his hair turned grey with woe, his eyes cast down, not daring to raise them towards his guilty wife. Oh, most horrible thing of all! even he, he whom she loved, worshipped, turning away from her, disbelieving, despising, loathing her!
And then she would wake up with a start, with cries and tears, to find her husband by her side, soothing her with loving words and fondling her as she lay sobbing on his breast.
She knew that she had an implacable enemy. She could not tell in what way Susan would work her harm, but she was only too certain that the malicious woman would do so to the utmost of her ability. The shadow darkened around Mary as she waited for the blow to strike, not knowing at what moment it might come. Yet how to prevent it! What to do!
In a fortnight after the receipt of the letter, a great change had come over her. All the innocent gladness had forsaken her. She wandered about the house a pale and listless being, taking no interest in the pursuits she once loved. Her great delight had been to take the green-house completely under her care; she had been very proud of it, and would allow no one else to interfere in its management. But now it made the doctor's heart bleed to see its neglected condition, its melancholy show of withered leaves that lay unswept, and faded blossoms on the untended plants, a sure sad sign to him of the darkness that was coming to his young wife's mind.
It was in vain that he tried to discover the cause of this change: his questions could elicit nothing from her. One evening towards the end of this miserable fortnight, they were sitting together in the drawing-room. He drew his chair close to hers, and after some conversation in which he did his best to coax her with affectionate words into her happy confiding mood of old, he said:
"Mary, dear! I know that there is something on your mind, you are just as you used to be in those sad days when I first knew you. You know I do not wish you to tell me your secret: but there can be no harm in your saying if your present trouble is connected with it in any way."
She moved uneasily in her chair, as if afraid of his earnest gaze, and replied with hesitation, "I don't know, Harry, I can't say. But there is no good in talking about it. I shall grow out of this nervous state again soon, I suppose."
"But there is good in talking about it. I want to understand what to do with you, how to make my poor little pet happy again. Here you are, getting sadder, and paler, and thinner, every day, and you will give me no clue to all this. You will not allow me to help you. Do so, Mary, please now! for my sake if not for your own. You don't know how miserable I am all day thinking of you."
"You promised not to ask me my secret," she replied in wretched accents. "Besides," she continued in desperation "what is the matter with me now, has nothing to do with my secret," and she could have bitten her tongue out immediately afterwards that she had uttered the untruth.