“I’m afraid it’s brain fever,” he muttered. “You must keep him very quiet.”
Before morning, the doctor’s prediction proved to be right. Brain fever of the most violent kind had set in. He lay as if at death’s door, incoherently raving.
Alarmed by the constant references to the one subject of “murder,” and the constant repetitions of Mrs. Haldane’s name, Miss Santley next day sent a messenger up to Foxglove Manor to make inquiries. Her messenger ascertained from Mrs. Feme, the lodge-keeper, that the vicar had been seen by the servants the previous night, in a state resembling mania, and had told them some wild story of Mrs. Haldane’s death by violence. For the rest, Mrs. Feme said, nothing of an extraordinary nature had occurred at the Manor, and her mistress, though slightly indisposed, was up and about.
So Miss Santley kept watch by the delirious man’s bedside, while he lay and fought for life.
The crisis passed. One morning the vicar opened his eyes, and saw his sister sitting silently close to his bed. The fever had almost left him, and he recognized his own room in the Vicarage.
“Is it you, Mary?” he asked, reaching out his hand, now worn almost to a skeleton.
“Yes, it is I. But you must not speak.”
“Have I been ill, Mary?”
“Yes; very, very ill.”
He closed his eyes, and seemed to fall into a sleep, which lasted for some hours. Suddenly he started up, as if listening, and seemed about to spring from the bed.