Major Fielding and his daughter asked the physician many questions concerning the nature of the sufferer’s illness, and the chances of her recovery, and they received answers from him which were intended to be encouraging, but which were really depressing.
Miss Rosenthal’s brain and nervous system were very much affected, he said. The disease was paroxysmal in its tendency. She was now composed, and if a reaction into fever and delirium could be prevented, she would do well.
This was all the satisfaction they could get from her medical attendant.
Ah, “if.”
Every means, short of drugging her into the sleep of death with sedatives and opiates, were taken to prevent a relapse into her fearful frenzy.
Elfie sat by the bed all night, and administered all the medicines with her own hands, and kept ice to the head and mustard to the feet and wrists of her patient.
But all this was in vain, or attended with only a partial success.
Towards midnight Erminie’s cheeks and lips began to flush; she moved restlessly, and muttered in her sleep.
Elfie renewed the medicine, the ice and the mustard, but with little effect.
The evil symptoms increased rapidly, and before morning Erminie was again, with blazing eyes and burning cheeks, raving and tossing in an agony of fever and frenzy.