St. Victor's quickly flashing gaze was met by that clear, resolute, almost fierce response in the physician's eye, before which he hesitated, then shrank. The madman had his master before him.
"You are right. I am not very well; my head aches; I'm worn out with this trouble about Edith, doctor. Do you think it is hopeless? She had better come with us. I don't like to leave her alone with that hideous shape at her back."
Obeying the gentle but firm pull upon his wrist, the brother turned to leave the room, looking back wistfully upon his sister. She was following them with clasped hands, and a face from which all youth and color had fled. St. Victor suddenly paused, gave a scream like the cry of a panther, wrenched himself quickly from the grasp upon his arm, and, in an instant, his teeth were buried in the white shoulder of his sister. But only for an instant, for almost as quickly as the madman's movement had been the doctor's. One terrible blow of his fist sent the maniac to the floor like a clod.
"O doctor! why did you do it?"
"To save your life, Miss Marchand."
"Poor St. Victor! His fate is on him at last."
Her voice was calm in its very despair. She sank down beside the senseless man, lifting the worn, white face to her lap and covering it with kisses. "I saw it,—yet I did not think it would come so soon. O God! be pitiful! Have I not prayed enough?"
The lips of the injured man began to quiver. "We must bind him and get him to bed before he fully recovers," said the doctor, lifting Edith to her feet. "Here, Thompson, help me to carry him to his bed."
When the maniac recovered consciousness fully, his ravings were fearful. It was the malady of frenzy in its most appalling condition. The extent of the mental wreck Dr. Graham had, for the last half hour of the feast, been trying to fathom. When he dealt that dreadful blow he knew the wreck was complete: reason had gone out forever with that panther-like shriek. All that could be done was to secure the maniac against injury to himself or others, and to administer such anti-spasmodics or anæsthetics as, in some degree, would control the paroxysms.
Poor St. Victor! So young, so gifted, so blest with worldly goods; his fate was upon him, as Edith had said.