When the first patient came back well from the seaside her rejoicing overflowed in exultation before the friends to whom she confessed her agency in the affair. Putney pretended that he could not see what pleasure she could reasonably take in restoring the child to the sort of life it had been born to; but that was a matter she would not consider, theoretically or practically.
She began to go outside of Dr. Morrell's authority; she looked up two cases herself, and, upon advising with their grandmothers, sent them to the seaside, and she was at the station when the train came in with the young mother and the still younger aunt of one of the sick children. She did not see the baby, and the mother passed her with a stare of impassioned reproach, and fell sobbing on the neck of her husband, waiting for her on the platform. Annie felt the blood drop back upon her heart. She caught at the girlish aunt, who was looking about her with a sense of the interest which attached to herself as a party to the spectacle.
“Oh, Rebecca, where is the child?”
“Well, there, Miss Kilburn, I'm ril sorry to tell you, but I guess the sea-air didn't do it a great deal of good, if any. I tell Maria she'll see it in the right light after a while, but of course she can't, first off. Well, there! Somebody's got to look after it. You'll excuse me, Miss Kilburn.”
Annie saw her run off to the baggage-car, from which the baggage-man was handing out a narrow box. The ground reeled under her feet; she got the public depot carriage and drove home.
She sent for Dr. Morrell, and poured out the confession of her error upon him before he could speak. “I am a murderess,” she ended hysterically. “Don't deny it!”
“I think you can be got off on the ground of insanity, Miss Kilburn, if you go on in this way,” he answered.
Her desperation broke in tears. “Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do? I've killed the child!”
“Oh no, you haven't,” he retorted. “I know the case. The only hope for it was the sea-air; I was going to ask you to send it—”
She took down her handkerchief and gave him a piercing look. “Dr. Morrell, if you are lying to me—”