"Why should I speak when every word I utter you believe, or affect to believe, to be the ravings of a maniac? I will speak no more," said the lady, turning away her superb dark eyes and looking out of the window.
"Ah, madame will not so punish her friend, her servant, her slave!"
A gesture of fierce impatience and disgust was the only reply deigned by the lady.
"Come away; she is angry and may become dangerously excited," said the old doctor, leading the way from the cell.
"Did you tell me this lady is one of the incurables?" inquired Traverse, when they had left her apartment.
"Bah! yes, poor girl, vera incurable, as my sister would say."
"Yet she appears to me to be perfectly sane, as well as exceedingly beautiful and interesting."
"Ah, bah; my excellent, my admirable, my inexperienced young friend, that is all you know of lunatics! With more or less violence of assertion, they every one insist upon their sanity, just as criminals protest their innocence. Ah, bah! you shall go into every cell in this ward and find not one lunatic among them," sneered the old doctor, as he led the way into the next little room.
It was indeed as he had foretold, and Traverse Rocke found himself deeply affected by the melancholy, the earnest and sometimes the violent manner in which the poor unfortunates protested their sanity and implored or demanded to be restored to home and friends.
"You perceive," said the doctor, with a dry laugh, "that they are none of them crazy?"