"Oh, she's in league with you and Joy. I know all about it! She spies on me—hides things from me—tells on me! She and you are trying your best to get rid of me—the doctor said so! You are plotting to destroy me right now!" she flashed out, turning to me, her lips quivering with excitement. "I can tell! I know! You may go, too, Mr. Castle, I'm through with you, too! Leave this house, please!"
I tried to pacify her, thinking that, distraught with the violent moods she had shown to-day, a reaction would soon come. She was almost hysterical, and I waited for the revulsion of feeling, without heeding her words. In a moment it came. It was as if an angel and a devil were contending in her for the mastery, but the angel won again.
She sat down limply in a chair that was drawn up to the secretary, and the tears came to her eyes. I saw Leah go out the front door and hurry down the lane.
"Oh, I'm so wretched!" Edna complained bitterly. "I haven't a friend—not even Doctor Copin. All he wants is my money, and all you want is Joy. Oh, Chet, let me be your friend! Let me be your friend—you may stay—I'll be good, sure I will! I'll do anything if you'll only love me and be good to me! I'll take Leah back; I'll dismiss the doctor. Why was I sent here, anyway? Nobody wants me, nobody cares for me!"
She looked up at me and held out her hand. It was the stricken deer appealing for protection to the hunters. I had never seen her so gentle and tender. It was, for the moment, as if Joy herself were pleading for her life.
As I stood there, watching her, debating what to do, her head dropped to her left hand. With her right she had taken up a pencil which lay there, and was abstractedly making marks upon the blotter—circles and crosses and zigzag scrawls. But, even as she turned to me again, her eyes softened, I saw her right hand move more regularly over the paper blotter. She was writing, and writing automatically, without looking at what she was doing. A sudden idea came to me that the writing was inspired by some subconscious, subliminal self and I must let it have free play, that I must divert her thought from that hand.
So I walked up to her and touched her head, stroking her soft, brown hair. "Poor girl!" I said; "I wish I could answer your questions; I wish I might help you. Perhaps we can think out a way. We'll talk it over and see."
Her hand was still writing, as she looked up at me and listened.
"But you must tell me all about the doctor, and what he is doing. Is he coming own here to-day?"
She leaned affectionately against my side, her hand still working unconsciously. "I don't know," she said. "He may come on the eleven o'clock train, perhaps."