“Oh! if you put it that way,” she answered; “there’s no end to who’s responsible. You may say it was the Brigstocks. But the immediate responsibility is mine. I ought to have called in a doctor sooner. I ought not to have given him this shock. Don’t think I’m going to be morbid about it, but that sums it up, and the only question is how the thing is to be put straight. For that we want advice, and soon. The only question is who’s to give it?”
“But what are the facts?” Robert Grimshaw asked.
“Oh! you know the facts,” she answered.
“I want a few details,” he responded, “to give to the man I go to. When did it begin? Have you seen any signs of fever? Has he been off his feed, and so on?”
Pauline opened the door gently. She looked over her shoulder to see if Leicester had stirred. She held the door just ajar when she and Grimshaw were outside.
“I used to think,” she said, “even when we were engaged, that there was something a little strange about Dudley. It wasn’t an unpleasant strangeness. No, it was an attraction. He used to be absent in his manner at times. It was that gave me the idea that there might be something in him. It gave an idea that he really had a brain that stuck to something. Of course, when I twitted him with it, when I got really to know him, I discovered—but that was only after we were married—that he was only thinking about his health. But since we’ve been married he’s beep quite different. I don’t believe you really know Dudley. He is very quiet, but he does observe things, and he’s got a little humour of his own. I don’t suppose anyone else has ever noticed it, but it is there. His fits of strangeness before we were married were very much like this. Not so wild, but still like this in kind.”
She opened the door and peeped in. Dudley Leicester was sitting where he had been.
“As to fever—no, I haven’t noticed that he’s had any fever. He’s eaten very well, except when these fits of gloom were on him; then it was almost impossible to get him to the table. I don’t know when I noticed it first. He came down for mother’s funeral, and it seemed to me to be natural that he should be depressed. But in between these fits he’s been so nice, so nice!”
“I’ll ‘phone to Sir William Wells,” Grimshaw said; “I’ll ‘phone at once.”
“Oh, don’t ‘phone. Go!” she answered.