“Did Mrs. Maradick have a good night?” He had closed the door after us, and turning now with the question, he smiled kindly, as if he wished to put me at ease in the beginning.
“She slept very well after she took the medicine. I gave her that at eleven o’clock.”
For a minute he regarded me silently, and I was aware that his personality—his charm—was focussed upon me. It was almost as if I stood in the centre of converging rays of light, so vivid was my impression of him.
“Did she allude in any way to her—to her hallucination?” he asked.
How the warning reached me—what invisible waves of sense-perception transmitted the message—I have never known; but while I stood there, facing the splendour of the doctor’s presence, every intuition cautioned me that the time had come when I must take sides in the household. While I stayed there I must stand either with Mrs. Maradick or against her.
“She talked quite rationally,” I replied after a moment.
“What did she say?”
“She told me how she was feeling, that she missed her child, and that she walked a little every day about her room.”
His face changed—how I could not at first determine.
“Have you see Doctor Brandon?”