And Strong commenced her duties with cheerful alacrity.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MYSTIFIED PEOPLE.
John Arthur sat before a smoldering fire, gazing moodily down at the charred embers that had lost their glow and only showed a dark red light here and there, as if to assure one that there was fire in the grate.
He was thinner than of old. His face wore a sickly pallor. His hands that clutched the arms of his invalid's chair worked incessantly, indicating surely that his nerves were in anything but a state of calm. He was feeble, too, in body; but his mind, spite of the verdict of the Bellair physician and the drugs of the Professor, was still unimpaired.
In the solitude of the two rooms, out of which he had not once stepped since first he was removed to the west wing, he had had ample time for reflection; but he had by no means arrived at a state of mental beatitude.
He had found it useless to struggle, useless to bluster, to argue or to plead. Henry was a merciless jailer, and Dr. Le Guise a sarcastic one.
His breakfast had been served, and stood upon the table beside him; but he scarcely glanced at it. When Henry came in from the ante-room to remove the things, he said, without looking up: "Go ask Le Guise to come to me."
Henry carried away the tray, deposited it in the ante-room, locked the door of the chamber carefully, and made his way to the breakfast-room.