"There was another reason," said George, "for keeping your cousin secluded in the country besides that which you have named. I had some faint glimmering of it when I first arrived at The Tower, and I heard of your mother's illness and my father's periodical visits. Before I left, I took means to verify my suspicions; and since I returned to town, I have had an opportunity of confirming them. Beyond question or doubt, your cousin Annette is the victim of a mental disorder. Paul, she is--that I, above all men, should have to tell you!--she is mad!" "Good God!" cried Paul Derinzy, starting to his feet, "you are mad yourself to talk so!--Whose authority have you for this statement?" "The best of all," said George Wainwright, sadly. "The authority of the physician in attendance upon her--the authority is my own father. This comes to supplement my own experience and my own observation. There is no doubt about it, Paul; would to God there was!" "And my mother--she must have known all this--she could not possibly have been ignorant of it!" cried Paul. George Wainwright was silent. "And she would have let me marry Annette without any revelation of the mystery, for the sake of that wretched money; she would have embittered my future, and rendered the rest of my life hopeless and miserable. What a shameful conspiracy! What a base and wicked plot!" "Hush, Paul!" said George Wainwright, laying his hand on his arm; "recollect of whom you are speaking." "It is that that makes it all the worse," cried Paul. "To think that she, my mother, should have been so besotted by the hope of greed as to shut her eyes to all the misery which she was heaping up in store for me. It is too horrible to think of. What a narrow chance I had! What a providential escape!" "Yes," said George, in a low voice, "you have escaped." There was something in his friend's tone which touched Paul's heart at once. "What a selfish brute I am," he cried, "to have been thinking of myself and to have forgotten you! How much worse it is for you than for me! My dear George, I never cared for Annette, and set my affections elsewhere; so that beyond the pity which I naturally feel for her, and the shock which I have experienced in learning that my mother could have been so short-sighted and so culpable, there is nothing to touch me in the matter. But you--you loved her for herself; you won her; for I never saw her take to or be interested in anyone so much before; and now you have to give her up." George's face was buried in his hands. He groaned heavily, but he said nothing. "Is there no hope?" asked Paul; "no hope of any cure? Is she irrecoverably insane?" "My father seems to say so," said George, looking up. "I had a long interview with him the other day; told him the whole story, and confided to him all my feelings. He was kindness itself; but he gave me no hope."