CHAPTER XXXVII. — THE HOUSE OF REFUGE
The illness of Edith was of no light or common kind. Her old glow of health had not yet returned. The state of affairs at Dalton Hall had retarded any thing like a complete recovery, and when she started off on her desperate flight, she was unfit for such a venture. Through that terrible night she had undergone what might have laid low a strong man, and the strength which had barely carried her to the door of the inn had there left her utterly; and so fierce was the attack that was now made upon her by this new illness that recovery seemed scarce possible.
The doctor was as non-committal as doctors usually are in a really dangerous case. It was evident, however, from the first, that her situation awakened in his mind the very deepest anxiety. He urged the landlady to keep the house in the quietest possible condition, and to see that she was never left without attendants. This the landlady promised to do, and was unremitting in her attentions.
But all the care of the attendants seemed useless. Deeper and deeper Edith descended into the abyss of suffering. Day succeeded to day, and found her worse. Fortunately she was not conscious of what she had to endure; but in that unconsciousness her mind wandered in delirium, and all the sorrows of the past were lived over again.
They knew not, those good kind souls who waited and watched at her bedside, what it was that thus rose before her, and distressed her in the visions of her distempered brain, but they could see that these were the result of deep grief and long sorrow, and therefore they pitied her more than ever. As her mind thus wandered, she talked incessantly, often in broken words, but often also in long connected sentences, and all these were intermingled with moans and sighs.
“This is a heart-rending,” said the doctor once. “It is her mind, poor lady, that has brought on this illness. In this case medicine is of no use. You can do more than I can. You must watch over her, and keep her as quiet as she can be kept.”
All of which the landlady promised more fervently than ever, and kept her promise too.
But in spite of all this care, the fever and the delirium grew worse. The events of her Dalton life rose before her to the exclusion of all other memories, and filled all her thoughts. In her fancies she again lived that life of mingled anxiety and fear, and chafed and raged and trembled by turns at the restraint which she felt around her. Then she tried to escape, but escape was impossible. Then she seemed to speak with some one who promised deliverance. Eagerly and earnestly she implored this one to assist her, and mentioned plans of escape.