“Hardly like her usual writing—though there's her own strange S!” remarked John as he looked at it.
“Does she always make an S like that?” asked my uncle, with something peculiar in his tone, I thought.
“Always—like a snake just going to strike.”
My uncle's face grew ghastly pale. He almost snatched the letter from John's hand, looked at it, gave it back to him, and, to our dismay, left the room.
“What can be the matter, John?” I said, my heart sinking within me.
“Go to him,” said John.
I dared not. I had often seen him like that before walking out into the night; but there was something in his face now which I had not seen there before. It looked as if some terrible suspicion were suddenly confirmed.
“You see what my mother is after!” said John. “You have now to believe her, that I am subject to fits of insanity, or to believe me, that there is nothing she will not do to get her way.”
“Her object is clear,” I replied. “But if she thinks to fool my uncle, she will find herself mistaken!”
“She hopes to fool both you and your uncle,” he rejoined. “The only wise thing I could do, she will handle so as to convince any expert of my madness—I mean, my coming to you! My reasons will go for nothing—less than no-thing—with any one she chooses to bewitch. She will look at me with an anxious love no doctor could doubt. No one can know you do not know that I am not mad—or at least subject to attacks of madness!”