“Mrs. Massey!”
The minister’s voice was stern. Nan hardly knew him.
“Mrs. Massey, nothing like that has happened! Joyce Radway has never lost her mind! She is too filled with the spirit of Christ for that. She is too much God’s child. There is nothing like Jesus Christ to keep a mind sane and steady. Don’t ever utter that thought to any living being again!”
Nan cringed as she stood by the study door. His voice was almost like the command of one who had authority over her.
“Oh, are you sure?” she managed to say weepily. “That’s such a comfort. That thought has tormented me night and day, perhaps Joyce was shut up in some awful insane asylum—”
“Hush!” said the doctor sternly. “That could never be. She may have fallen into some danger, or be sick in some hospital, but never that! She is God’s own child.”
Nan slid out of the door like a serpent, rebuked, murmuring:
“Well, I’m glad I came, you’ve given me so much comfort!” but she walked down the street with angry eyes and set mouth. Her mission had been a failure so far as winning over that old dolt was concerned. What a fool he was over Joyce! What a fool everybody was over her! What did they see in her anyway to be so crazy about? She couldn’t understand.
Nevertheless, as she drew toward her own home, meditating on her recent interview, something in her heart told her exultantly that she had not failed entirely, for she had managed to give a different coloring to the situation, much as the old minister had hated to accept it. He would think it over, and he would presently come to be uncertain, and perhaps to half believe what she had told him. And when later, other developments occurred, he might give credence to the thoughts which she had put into his mind. Nan was not extremely clever, but, somehow, the devil in her shallow heart comforted her with this, and the hope that some day, if trouble really broke, Gene would thank her and be proud of her for having prepared the way for a creditable story that would not reflect upon them.
By the time she had got supper ready she was quite pleased with her afternoon’s work. She had planted the seed in Doctor Ballantine’s subconscious mind and it would grow. By the time he told his wife it would even so soon have begun to grow. She need not worry about developments. Perhaps even Gene would never have to know that she had had anything to do with it.