Sir Lionel then smiled as before, and chuckled to himself, while a leer of cunning triumph flashed for a moment from his wandering eyes. “Trapped!” he ejaculated, softly. “Trapped! The keeper! The keeper trapped! She thought she was my keeper! And so she was. But she was trapped—yes, trapped. The keeper trapped! Ha, ha, ha! She thought it was an inn,” he continued, after a brief silence, in which he chuckled to himself over the remembrance of his scheme; “and so she was trapped. The keeper was caught herself, and found herself in a mad-house! And she'll never get out—never! She's mad. They'll all believe it. Mad! Yes, mad—and in a mad-house! Ha, ha, ha! There's Lady Dudleigh for you! But she's Mrs. Dunbar now. Ha, ha, ha!”
Reginald's eagerness to learn more was uncontrollable. In his impatience to find out he could no longer wait for his father's stray confessions.
“What mad-house? Where?” he asked, eagerly and abruptly.
Sir Lionel did not look at him. But the question came to him none the less. It came to him as if it had been prompted by his own thoughts, and he went on upon the new idea which this question started.
“She saw me write it, too—the letter—and she saw me write the address. There it was as plain as day—the address. Dr. Morton, I wrote, Lichfield Asylum, Lichfield, Berks. But she didn't look at it. She helped me put it in the post-office. Trapped! Trapped! Oh yes—the keeper trapped!” he continued. “She thought we were going to Dudleigh Manor, but we were going to Lichfield Asylum. And we stopped there. And she stopped there. And she is there now. Trapped! Ha, ha, ha! And, my good doctor, keep her close, for she's mad. Oh yes—mad—mad—mad—and very dangerous!”
The wretched man now began to totter from weakness, and finally sat down upon the floor. Here he gathered his quilt about him, and began to smile and chuckle and wag his head and pick at his fantastic dress as before. The words which he muttered were inaudible, and those which could be heard were utterly incoherent. The subject that had been presented to his mind by the entrance of Reginald was now forgotten, and his thoughts wandered at random, like the thoughts of a feverish dream, without connection and without meaning.
Reginald turned away. He could no longer endure so painful a spectacle. He had been long estranged from his father, and he had come home for the sake of obtaining justice from that father, for the sake of the innocent man who had suffered so unjustly and so terribly, and whom he loved as a second father. Yet here there was a spectacle which, if he had been a vengeful enemy, would have filled him with horror. One only feeling was present in his mind now to alleviate that horror, and this was a sense of profound relief that this terrible affliction had not been wrought by any action of his. He had no hand in it. It had come upon his father either as the gradual result of years of anxiety, or as the immediate effect of the sudden appearance of Dalton and his wife.
But for these thoughts there was no leisure. His whole mind was filled with but one idea—his mother. In a few moments they were outside the room. The madman was left to himself, and Reginald questioned Leon about him.
“I have heard all this before,” said Leon. “He came home very queer, and before a week was this way. I put him in there to keep him out of mischief. I feed him myself. No one else goes near him. I've had a doctor up, but he could do nothing. He has often talked in this way about trapping someone, but he never mentioned any name till today. He never did—I swear he never did. I swear I had no idea that he had reference to my—to Lady Dudleigh. I thought it was some crazy fancy about Mr. Dalton—some scheme of his for 'trapping' him. I did—I swear.”
Such was Leon's statement, extorted from him by the fiercest of cross-questionings on the part of Reginald, accompanied by most savage threats.