"She is young, Sir," she said, "and her reason may get the upper hand yet. It is not as if she was utterly wild. If there's much strangeness there's likewise much sense in what she says. This proves she's capable of reasoning; and there's no telling at her time of life what nature mayn't do for her." "My position is terrible," I said. "This kind of existence is life in death. It is hard--it is hard to see one I love so well, who loves me with so pure and rare a love, slowly succumbing to this most awful of human diseases. Cannot I save her? Would a change benefit her, do you think?" "I doubt it, Sir. It is not always thought wise to change the residences of people so afflicted. Their feelings will reason for them when they are surrounded with familiar things. If you bring them among strangers and into strange places their poor faculties haven't the power to grasp what they hear and see. It's like cutting the thread that supports them." "But it is impossible that I can sit quietly by and see her decaying, as it were, before me. I must do something." "Would you like to have a doctor to see her, Sir?" "I have thought of that. I have thought of taking her to London. But what excuse could I make--what would she think?" "Wouldn't it be better to have a doctor down here, Sir?" "To be sure it would," I replied, grasping the idea at once. "I could pretend he was a friend." "Yes, Sir; and he wouldn't require to stop longer than two or three days." "Perhaps not. He would see her in all her moods and come to a conclusion on which he would base his advice." I was turning from her when she said, "I believe, Sir, Mr. Martelli is at Cliffegate." "Martelli?" I exclaimed, stopping short. "Why, Sir, so Sarah says," (Sarah was the housemaid). "She was that way yesterday, and says she saw him sitting on the beach." "I can hardly believe it. What should Martelli do here?--unless, indeed, he has taken a situation at a school--but you have no schools here, have you?" "No, Sir. But it is quite likely Sarah was mistaken. She was in a hurry, and the gentleman she saw might well happen to be a stranger. Yet she declares the person she saw was Mr. Martelli." "Perhaps he has returned to Cliffegate wishing to return to me: but it is out of the question that I could receive him now."