“I will go,” she said, “and call John; he will tell you what he thinks,” with the impulse of a maddened woman to bring a man’s strength into her quarrel and punish her adversary. What she thought John could do to Dr. Barker she did not know; and indeed she did not go to tell John. She returned to her room which she had left only a few minutes before, and from which she chased the frightened housemaids with a stamp on the floor which made them fly wildly, leaving brooms and dusters behind. The windows were all open, the sunshine bursting in in a great twinkling of light after yesterday’s rain. She locked the door that she might be alone, and closed the windows one after another with a sound like thunder. To give expression to the rage that devoured her was something, a necessity, the only way of getting out her passion. The fever gone, the fever gone! the fever which was her friend, which had worked for her, which had promised everything--everything that her heart desired. And they looked her in the face and told her it was gone! the fools and hypocrites, that vile woman crying in her falseness, the man triumphing over her, pretending to congratulate her when he must have known---- How could they help knowing? They must have known! They had done it on purpose to make her betray herself, to surprise her thoughts, to exult over her. And she had been so sure, so easy in her mind, so certain that everything was going well! Oh, oh!--her breath of rage could command no more expression than that common monosyllable. She could not appeal to God as people do in such wild shocks of passion. It was not God who could be appealed to. The other perhaps if she had known how--there are times when devil-worship might be a relief if it could be done. “My God!” said Dr. Barker, who was not so restrained. “She is wild with disappointment and rage. Did she wish the boy to die?” “Oh, doctor--she wished her own boy to be in his place,” said the nurse, who perhaps had a semi-maternal light upon the matter. The doctor kept on shaking his head as he finished his prescription. “Don’t wake him for this or anything--not even for food; but give him the food as I told you.” “I know, I know,” said the nurse, on whom the overstrain of her nerves was telling, too; “don’t you think I know, sir, how important it is.” “Don’t you go off, too--don’t leave him for a moment. Avoid all noise or discussion. Try and keep everyone out, especially----” He did not finish his sentence, but it was unnecessary. “All I can do, doctor--all I can do. But Mrs. Parke is the mistress of the house.” “She will not come back again,” he said, “she will be in a terrible fright when she knows how she betrayed herself. Poor thing! as you say, it was to put her boy in his place. They were wild before when this boy was born. Well, perhaps there is some excuse for them.” “But you will come back to-night?”