Chapter 17 - Page 2

not?"

"I can't say that."

"What has brought it on?"

"I am afraid the blow he received on the head has brought it on."

She asked no more questions; her eager face passed suddenly into a state of repose. Something seemed to have come into her mind--after the doctor's answer to her own question--which absorbed her in herself. When Oscar recovered his consciousness, she left it to me to answer the first natural questions which he put. When he personally addressed her she spoke to him kindly, but briefly. Something in her, at that moment, seemed to keep her apart, even from him. When the doctor proposed taking him back to Browndown, she did not insist, as I had anticipated, on going with them. She took leave of him tenderly--but still she let him go. While he yet lingered near the door, looking back at her, she moved away slowly to the further end of the room; self-withdrawn into her own dark world--shut up in her thoughts from him and from us.

The doctor tried to rouse her.

"You must not think too seriously of this," he said, following her to the window at which she stood, and dropping his voice so that Oscar could not hear him. "He has himself told you that he feels lighter and better than he felt before the fit. It has relieved instead of injuring him. There is no danger. I assure you, on my honor, there is nothing to fear."

"Can you assure me, on your honor, of one other thing," she asked, lowering her voice on her side. "Can you honestly tell me that this is not the first of other fits that are to come?"

The doctor parried the question.

"We will have another medical opinion," he answered, "before we decide. The next time I go to see him, a physician from Brighton shall go with me."

Oscar, who had thus far waited, wondering at the change in her, now opened the door. The doctor returned to him. They left us.

She sat down on the window-seat, with her elbows on her knees and her hands grasping her forehead. A long moaning cry burst from her. She said to herself bitterly the one word--"Farewell!"

I approached her; feeling the necessity of reminding her that I was in the room.

"Farewell to what?" I asked, taking my place by her side.

"To his happiness and to mine," she answered, without lifting her head from her hands. "The dark days are coming for Oscar and for me."

"Why should you think that? You heard what the doctor said."

"The doctor doesn't know what I know."

"What do you know?"

She paused before she answered me. "Do you believe in fate?" she said, suddenly breaking the silence.

"I believe in nothing which encourages people to despair of themselves," I replied.