Her faint voice wandered on. "I was not thinking of that. That was nothing! He stole some money, and it cost him dear.... No!—it was worse than that—a bad thing!... It was not the girl's fault.... Emma was a good girl...."
Granny Marrable was injudicious. But it was an automatic want of judgment, bred of mind-strain. She could not help saying:—"Was that Emma Drax?" For the name, which she had heard from the convict, had hung on her mind, always setting her to work to fashion some horrible story for its owner.
"Yes—Emma Drax.... They found her guilty.... I do not mean that.... What is it I mean?... I mean they laid it all at her door.... Men do!" This seemed half wandering, and Granny Marrable hoped it meant a return of sleep. She was disappointed. For old Maisie became more restless and hot, starting convulsively, catching at her hand, and exclaiming:—"But how came you to know?—how came you to know? You were not there then. Oh, Phoebe dearest, you were not there then." She kept on saying this, and Granny Marrable despaired of finding words to explain, under such circumstances. The tale of her meeting with the convict was too complex. She thought to herself that she might say that Maisie had spoken the name as a dream-word, waking. But that would have been a fib, and fibs were not her line.
"I went myself to get him," said Ruth, reappearing after a longer absence than old Phoebe had anticipated. She was removing an out-of-door cloak, and an extempore headwrap, when she entered the room. "How is she?" she asked.
Old Phoebe shook her head doubtfully. "Whom did you go for, child? The doctor? I'm glad."
"I thought it better.... Mother darling!—how are you?" She knelt by the bed, held the burning hands, looked into the wild eyes. "Yes—I did quite right," she said.
Dr. Nash came, not many minutes later. Whether the mixture to be taken every two hours, fifty years ago, was the same as would have been given now, does not concern the story. It, or the reassurance of the doctor's visit, had a sedative effect; and old Maisie seemed to sleep, to the great satisfaction of her nurses. What really did credit to his professional skill was that he perceived that a visit from Lady Gwendolen would be beneficial. A message was sent at once to John Costrell, saying that an accompanying letter was to be taken promptly to the Towers, to catch her ladyship before she went out. We have seen that it reached her in time.
"You found that all I told you was true, Granny Marrable," said the doctor, after promising to return in time to catch her ladyship.