In making this reply I was guiltless of any malicious intention. What evil interpretation she placed on my words it is impossible for me to say; I can only declare that some intolerable sense of injury hurried her into an outbreak of rage. Her voice, strained for the first time, lost its tuneful beauty of tone.
“Come and see us in two years’ time,” she burst out—“and discover the orphan of the gallows in our house if you can! If your Asylum won’t take her, some other Charity will. Ha, Mr. Governor, I deserve my disappointment! I ought to have remembered that you are only a jailer after all. And what is a jailer? Proverbially a brute. Do you hear that? A brute!”
Her strength suddenly failed her. She dropped back into the chair from which she had risen, with a faint cry of pain. A ghastly pallor stole over her face. There was wine on the sideboard; I filled a glass. She refused to take it. At that time in the day, the Doctor’s duties required his attendance in the prison. I instantly sent for him. After a moment’s look at her, he took the wine out of my hand, and held the glass to her lips.
“Drink it,” he said. She still refused. “Drink it,” he reiterated, “or you will die.”
That frightened her; she drank the wine. The Doctor waited for a while with his fingers on her pulse. “She will do now,” he said.
“Can I go?” she asked.
“Go wherever you please, madam—so long as you don’t go upstairs in a hurry.”
She smiled: “I understand you, sir—and thank you for your advice.”
I asked the Doctor, when we were alone, what made him tell her not to go upstairs in a hurry.
“What I felt,” he answered, “when I had my fingers on her pulse. You heard her say that she understood me.”