"You mean for people who are insane," said she, holding tightly to the woman's arm.
Mary Brown nodded acquiescence.
Lily was silent a moment, lost in painful thought. At length she said, sadly:
"I hope you do not think that I am insane, Mary Brown?"
"Oh! dear, no, miss," said Mary, in her placid tone. "Of course not."
"But you do believe it. I can see that plainly," cried Lily, in an anguished tone. "You have been humoring and petting me, taking me for some insane creature. But I assure you I am not. I am perfectly sane, though I have suffered cruelty and injustice enough to have driven me mad long ago. I have been brought here by two wicked men to be made a prisoner because I will not marry a man whom I hate."
"You poor, injured dear," said the good nurse, affecting to believe the young girl's story, though in her heart she set it down simply as one of the vagaries of madness.
"You do not believe me," cried Lily, passionately. "Oh! God, is this crowning insult to be added to my sufferings? Must they represent me as mad, and thus drive me into insanity indeed?"
The attendant began to think that her beautiful and gentle patient was becoming violent. She gently but forcibly released her arms from Lily's clasp, and laid the moaning girl back on her pillow.
"My dear," she said, "you must not excite yourself. You look too ill to stand agitation. I must go now and help Doctor Heath to manage that poor shrieking maniac in the next room. Try and go to sleep, my pretty dear."