Finally, Lamotte brought himself to a sitting posture, and, with the look and tone of a man utterly crushed, said:
"Thank you, Heath. You have done me a kindness. This is the most terrible, most unheard of thing. My poor sister must be mad. She has not been herself, now that I remember, for some weeks. Something has been preying upon her spirits. There has been—by heavens! Ray, Ray Vandyck, can you guess at the cause of this madness?"
Raymond Vandyck wheeled suddenly, and came close to his interlocutor, the hot, angry blood surging to his face.
"There was plenty of 'method in this madness,'" he sneered. "As to the cause, it may not be so hard to discover as you seem to imagine." And, before they could recover from their astonishment, he was out and away, banging the door fiercely as he went.
For a moment the lurid light gleamed in Frank Lamotte's eye, and it seemed that another "attack" was about to seize him, but he calmed himself with a mighty effort, and turning toward Doctor Heath, said, plaintively:
"Has all the world run mad, Heath? What the devil does that fellow mean?"
"I know no more than you, Lamotte," said the doctor, upon whose face sat a look of genuine surprise. "I don't think he quite knows himself. He has been sadly worked up by this affair."
"Humph! I suppose so. Well, for Sybil's sake, I forgive him, this once; but—I hope he will outgrow these hallucinations."
"Doubtless he will," replied the doctor, somewhat drily. "I say, Lamotte, you had better run down to my house, and turn in for a couple of hours; you look done up,—and you can't stand much more of this sort of thing. I must go now, to see old Mrs. Grady, over at the mills."
"Then I will just stretch myself here, Heath," replied Lamotte. "I don't feel equal to a start out just now; and, look here, old fellow," turning a shade paler, as he spoke, "deal gently with a fallen rival after this—disgrace. Of course, I quit the field; but—don't ride over me too hard."