“Oh no, no, no!” Helen cried, brokenly, covering her face with her hands; “it is all a mistake. You are all doing this for my sake, and it is not the truth—it is not the truth!”
“You are ill, Helen!” cried Inez, alarmed by her appearance as well as by the wildness of her words; “come, let me take you to your room.”
Unresistingly Helen suffered herself to be led into the house, leaving Uncle Peabody and Cerini looking apprehensively at each other.
“He longs—for the return to him—of the wife—he has always loved,” Helen murmured over and over again, as Inez and Annetta undressed her and gently put her into bed. She seemed indifferent to what Inez said to her, and conscious only of the words which she kept repeating. Thoroughly frightened, Inez left her in Annetta’s care while she rushed down-stairs to summon the doctor.
XXXII
For a few days Helen’s condition was grave enough to warrant the anxiety which pervaded the entire household. Dr. Montgomery was again pressed into service, and found his skill taxed to the utmost to meet the condition in which he found his new patient.
“This is a great surprise to me,” he remarked to Uncle Peabody, shaking his head ominously. “I have made it a point to watch Mrs. Armstrong throughout the shock and the strain of her husband’s accident, anticipating that this nervous reaction might occur; but the time when it would naturally have happened is now long since passed.”
Mr. Cartwright reluctantly explained to the doctor enough of the facts to assist him to a proper understanding of the case, and with sympathies fully enlisted his efforts were redoubled. The patient herself proved to be his greatest obstacle. Try as he would, he could not arouse in her any interest in her recovery. She accepted his services and those of the nurse without question, but in an apathetic manner. Armstrong, Inez, and Uncle Peabody hovered about the sick-chamber, eagerly grasping such information as the nurse and the doctor were able to give them, the anxious lines in their faces becoming deeper as the hours passed by.