“It could not have been a friend, then, with whom you took refuge,” said Rich.
Mark was silent.
“Must it not have been a dream?” said Janet in a whisper to her companion.
“No,” said Rich aloud. “I think that all Mark recollects before he took this medicine must be true, and that this friend must have drugged him.”
Mark drew a long, catching breath between his teeth.
“And robbed him while he slept.”
Mark’s breast rose and fell as if he were suffering some great emotion, and he stared at Rich wildly, his hand twitching and his lip quivering as he waited for her next speech, which seemed to crush him, as she asked in a clear firm voice.
“Who was the friend to whose house you went?”
He looked at her wildly, with the thoughts of the consequences of telling her that which he believed to be the truth—that Dr Chartley—her father—the father of the woman he passionately loved—had drugged him—taken the treasure for which he had fought so hard, and then cast him forth feverish and delirious into the river to die. For he realised it now: he had been swimming; he could even recall the very plunge; he had been cast into the river to drown, and somehow he must have struggled out.
“Who was the friend, Mark?” she said again, in her calm firm way.