Captain Grey turned his head, so that Lexy could see his handsome, sensitive face in profile.
“That seems to me a pretty risky thing to do,” he said, with a trace of sternness. “I hope, sir, that you don’t—”
“Don’t give Muriel drugs that make her disposed to murder her grandmother?” interrupted the doctor, with another laugh; but he must have noticed that his companion was unresponsive, for he at once changed his tone. “No,” he said gravely. “I have made a particular study of Muriel’s case. She seriously overtaxed herself in her musical studies. Don’t be alarmed, my dear fellow—there is no permanent injury. It is simply a profound mental and nervous lassitude—obviously a case where artificial stimulation is required, until the tone of the lethargic brain is restored. I am able to do for her what, I feel certain, no one else now living could do. In this bottle”—he tapped one of them with his forefinger—“I have a preparation which would make my fortune, if I had the least ambition in that direction. Five drops of that, in a glass of water, and her depression and apathy are immediately dispelled. There is an instantaneous improvement in—”
Lexy waited to hear no more. She slipped down the stairs as quietly as she had come up, hurried along the hall, and went into her own room again. Her knees gave way and she collapsed into a chair, staring ahead of her with the most singular expression on her face.
She was, in fact, looking at a new idea, and it was not a welcome one.
“No!” she said to herself. “It’s out of the question. It’s too dangerous. I can’t do it!”
But the idea remained solidly before her; and the more she contemplated it, the more was her honest heart obliged to admit the possibilities in it.
“It can’t do any real harm,” she said; “and it might do good—so much good! All right, I’m going to do it!”
Half an hour before dinner she went down into the library, a polite and quiet young guest, even a little subdued. Dr. Quelton took Captain Grey out for a stroll on the beach. He asked Lexy to go with them, but she said she would prefer to stay with Mrs. Quelton.
It was very peaceful and pleasant there in the library. The late afternoon sun shone in through the long window, touching with a benign light the shabby and graceful old furniture, picking out a glitter of gold on the binding of a book, a dull gleam of silver or copper in a corner. A mild breeze blew in, fluttering the curtains and bringing a wholesome breath of the salt air.