"Not yet. I mean that there is no need of vigilant scrutiny, though I should advise you to keep her well in view. Her madness has not yet emphatically pronounced itself—but it may do so any day. You must humour her. Her love gives you an influence which no one else could easily possess. I predict, that when her insane moods are most vehement she will prove docile to you." He added, after a pause, "you should procure some woman whom you can trust to watch her. But not yet. Give her perfect freedom now. But when you find it needful to restrain her—and that time I fear will come—appoint some keeper of whose humanity and patience you can have proofs."
"Have you no hope that she will recover?"
"It is impossible for me to pronounce. From the character of the disease in her, I should say it would grow; but its culmination may not be intense. Neither good health nor good spirits will much profit her. Illness, indeed, is sometimes beneficial to madness. I once had a patient under my charge whom I considered incurable. He was seized with scarlet fever, which was within an ace of killing him. He escaped death by a miracle, and when the delirium passed, I found he had recovered his mind."
"But in the case of my wife, should you think her madness hereditary or acquired?"
"There again you puzzle me. It would be necessary for me to hear Mrs. Thorburn's history before I could hazard a conjecture."
"Her history is brief. She married a man who ill-treated her. Her sufferings must have been great, for it has made her detest the world and shun society like a plague. But I can discern no madness in this. It would be the natural attitude of a young mind embittered by wrong.
"As you say, her attitude is no proof of madness, but the cause that forced her into that attitude may have induced madness."
"You would attribute her derangement to her first husband's ill-treatment?"
"Her ill-treatment may have been one cause. If there were a previous disposition to madness a very painful experience would hardly fail to excite it. In my own mind, I have little doubt that she is oppressed with some recollection, of which the removal would benefit, if it did not cure her."
"Surely, I should be able to ascertain it?"