She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed out with it without reserve. Yate-Westbury gazed at her compassionately. He was a kind-hearted man. “No; certainly not,” he answered, with emphasis. “Not the very slightest reason in any way to fear it. The sanest man, coming from the very sanest and healthiest stock on earth, would almost certainly be subject to delusions under such circumstances. This is accident, not disease—circumstance, not temperament. The injury to the brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his son, and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the particular shape the delusion has assumed. But the injury’s the main thing. I don’t doubt there’s a clot of blood formed just here on the brain, obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due relations. In every other way, you say, he’s a good man of business. The very apparent rationality of the delusion—the way it’s been led up to by his habit of standing on cliffs, his name, his associations, his family, everything—is itself a good sign that the partial insanity is due to a local and purely accidental cause. It simulates reason as closely as possible. Dismiss the question altogether from your mind, as far as your daughter’s future is concerned. Its no more likely to be inherited than a broken leg or an amputated arm is.”
Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous tears. “Then all I have to do,” she sobbed out, “is to keep him from an outbreak until after my daughter’s married.”
Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded. “That’s all you have to do,” he answered, sympathetically. “And I’m sure Mrs. Trevennack—-” he paused with a start and checked himself.
“Why, how do you know my name?” the astonished mother cried, drawing back with a little shudder of half superstitious alarm at such surprising prescience.
Dr. Yate-Westbury made a clean breast of it. “Well, to tell the truth,” he said, “Mr. Trevennack himself called round here yesterday, in the afternoon, and stated the whole case to me from his own point of view, giving his name in full—as a man would naturally do—but never describing to me the nature of his delusion. He said it was too sacred a thing for him to so much as touch upon; that he knew he wasn’t mad, but that the world would think him so; and he wanted to know, from something he’d heard said, whether madness caused by an injury of the sort would or would not be considered by medical men as inheritable. And I told him at once, as I’ve told you to-day, there was not the faintest danger of it. But I never made such a slip in my life before as blurting out the name. I could only have done it to you. Trust me, your secret is safe in my keeping. I have hundreds in my head.” He took her hand in his own as he spoke. “Dear madam,” he said, gently, “I understand; I feel for you.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Trevennack answered low, with tears standing in her eyes. “I’m—I’m so glad you’ve SEEN him. It makes your opinion so much more valuable to me. But you thought his delusion wholly due to the accident, then?”
“Wholly due to the accident, dear lady. Yes, wholly, wholly due to it. You may go home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears are groundless. Miss Trevennack may marry with a clear conscience.”