A doctor would have discovered at once that what was wrong with her was phthisis, complicated with insanity; and the insanity, instead of taking the hopeful optimistic tinge which is characteristic of the insanity of consumption, had rather assumed the color of the events from which the disease itself had started. Cold, exposure, long-continued agony of mind and body--the madness intertwined with an illness which had such roots as these was naturally a madness of despair. One of its principal signs was the fixed idea as to Midsummer Day. It never occurred to her as possible that her life should be prolonged beyond that limit. Every night, as she dragged herself up the steep little staircase to her room, she checked off the day which had just passed from the days she had still to live. She had made all her arrangements; she had even sewed with her own hands, and that without any sense of special horror, but rather in the provident peasant way, the dress in which she was to be carried to her grave. At last one day, her father, coming unexpectedly into the yard, saw her carrying a heavy pail of water from the pump. Something stirred within him, and he went up to her and forcibly took it from her. Their looks met, and her poor mad eyes gazed intensely into his. As he moved forward toward the house she crept after him, passing him into the parlor, where she sank down breathless on the settle where she had been sleeping for the last few nights, rather than face climbing the stairs. For the first time he followed her, watching her gasping struggle for breath, in spite of her impatient motion to him to go. After a few seconds he left her, took his hat, went out, saddled his horse, and rode off to Whinborough. He got Dr. Baker to promise to come over on the morrow, and on his way back he called and requested to see Catherine Leyburn. He stammeringly asked her to come and visit his daughter who was ill and lonesome; and when she consented gladly, he went on his way feeling a load off his mind. What he had just done had been due to an undefined, but still vehement prompting of conscience. It did not make it any the less probable that the girl would die on or before Midsummer Day; but, supposing her story were true, it absolved him from any charge of assistance to the designs of those grisly powers in whose clutch she was. When the doctor came next morning a change for the worse had taken place, and she was too feeble actively to resent his appearance. She lay there on the settle, every now and then making superhuman efforts to get up, which generally ended in a swoon. She refused to take any medicine, she would hardly take any food, and to the doctor’s questions she returned no answer whatever. In the same way, when Catherine came, she would be absolutely silent, looking at her with glittering, feverish eyes, but taking no notice at all, whether she read or talked, or simply sat quietly beside her.