Time passed, and with closely cut hair, and a strange sallowness in his complexion, John Huish was up, and had been out times enough in the extensive garden, but there was a something in his manner that troubled the doctor a great deal, and was looked upon by him as a bad symptom. He was always dreaming over something, and what that was he never said.
Miss Stonor conversed with him, and he was gentle and talked rationally. He answered the doctor’s questions reasonably enough, and yet, as soon as his attention was released, he was back again, dreaming over the one thing that seemed to trouble his mind.
“Will he get well?” said Miss Selina to the doctor one morning.
“I’d give something to be able to say,” was the reply. “At times I think not, for I fear the impression upon his mind is that he is insane, and if a man believes that of himself, how can we get him to act like one who is sane?”
This was at breakfast-time, and the doctor soon after went out, leaving an assistant in charge.
It was a glorious afternoon, and Huish and the three patients were out in the garden, where Captain Lawdor was practising throwing biscuit, as he called it, at a stone balanced on the end of a stick. Mr Rawlinson had a table out and was writing a series of minutes on railway mismanagement; and Mr Roberts was following John Huish about as he walked up and down beneath the old red-brick wall which separated the garden from the road.
This went on for a time, and then Mr Roberts crept softly up to Huish, to whom he had not spoken since the night of the dinner, and said:
“I told you not to look at that Egyptian sorcerer. I knew it would send you mad.”
“Mad!” exclaimed Huish, smiling. “I am not mad.”
“Oh yes,” said Mr Roberts. “You came here and asked the doctor to cure you. No man could do that if he were not mad.”