"No one has told me, I say; the man is as new to me as if he had dropped from the clouds."
She thought a moment. "He must have left papers——"
"Oh!" exclaimed Edward, starting suddenly; "I have not read the papers! I see! I see!"
"You will find it there," she said, relieved. "I thought you knew already. It did not occur to me to tell you about him, sir! We have grown used to not speaking of him. He never goes out anywhere now." Edward was puzzled and then an explanation flashed upon him.
"He is insane!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, no, sir! But he has always been delicate—not like other children; and then the medicine they gave him when he had the pains and was a baby—he has been obliged to keep it up. It is the morphine and opium, sir, that has changed him." Edward nodded his head; the explanation was sufficient.
"He has lived here a long time, I presume?"
"Yes, sir. He smokes and reads and paints and does many curious things, but he never goes out. Sometimes he walks about the place, but generally at night; and once or twice in the last ten years he has gone down-town, but it excites him too much and he is apt to die away."
"Die away?"
"Yes, sir; the attacks come on him at any time, and so we let him live on as he wants to and no one sees him. He cannot bear strangers, but he is not insane, sir. One trouble is, he knows more than his head can hold—he studies too much." She said this very tenderly and her voice trembled a little as she finished and turned her face to work nervously.