"Yes, dear boy," said Diana.
"Dear, dear Diana, how good you are," he exclaimed, and he kissed her hand gratefully. "We have an hour here, to dine, before the train starts."
"Will you go on at once?" she asked. She had vainly hoped that he might be induced to stay in Florence. But he had recovered himself enough to know perfectly well what he was doing.
"Yes—certainly," said he. "We shall arrive in the morning." She dared not object nor make a suggestion, not knowing how soon he might break out again, in some fresh burst of madness.
"Very well," she answered, as a station porter took their handbags and smaller properties, "let us dine at once."
She watched him and saw that he ate with a good appetite. She had heard that lunatics always eat well, and she would almost rather have seen him too sad to care for his food; nevertheless she thought it would do him good.
There is probably nothing more wearing, more racking to the nerves, than the care of an insane person. To be ever on the watch, expecting always an outbreak or a painful incoherence, to attempt to follow the sensible nonsense that madmen talk, always endeavouring to distract the attention from the forbidden subject, are efforts requiring the highest tact and the greatest coolness. Diana could accomplish much by sheer common sense and endurance, and more, perhaps, by the strong affection which had always existed between her brother and herself. But she felt instinctively that she was not equal to the task, even while she hoped that Marcantonio was not really mad.
She was mistaken, however, as any indifferent person would have seen in a moment. He was insane, and on the verge of becoming violent. Nothing but her wonderful courage and strong will had kept him within any bounds, and he might at any moment become wholly uncontrollable.
She would have stopped in Florence if it had been possible, but it seemed dangerous to thwart him at present, and she felt sure that in Turin she could get the help of some first-rate physician. So she submitted once more, and in an hour they were off again, in a reserved carriage, as before, flying northwards towards the mountains, where the road winds so wonderfully through a hundred tunnels, in its rapid ascent.
It was a very long night for Diana. In all her many journeys she had never felt fatigue such as this. Marcantonio would sleep for an hour, and then start up suddenly and begin to talk, sometimes asking questions and sometimes volunteering remarks that showed how his mind was wandering. Once or twice he showed signs of returning to the account of his doings after Leonora had left him, but Diana was able to check him in time, for he was growing tired and yielded more easily to her will than in the daytime.