"It was something she did." We looked at each other a moment. "Did?" I echoed. "Did to whom?" "She won't tell me--she says she _can't_. She tries to bring it out, but it sticks in her throat." "Nonsense. She did nothing," I said. "What _could_ she do?" Helen asked, gazing at me. "She's ill, she's in a fever, her mind's wandering." "So I say to her father." "And what does _she_ say to him?" "Nothing--she won't speak to him. He's with her now, but she only lies there letting him hold her hand, with her face turned away from him and her eyes closed." "You must send for the doctor immediately." "I've already sent for him." "Should you like me to sit up with her?" "Oh, I'll do that!" Helen said. Then she asked: "But if you were there the other day, what did you see?" "Nothing whatever," I resolutely answered. "_Really_ nothing?" "Really, my dear child." "But was there nobody there who could have made up to her?" I hesitated a moment. "My poor Helen, you should have seen them!" "She wouldn't look at anybody that wasn't remarkably nice," Helen mused. "Well--I don't want to abuse your friends--but nobody was remarkably nice. Believe me, she hasn't looked at anybody, and nothing whatever has occurred. She's ill, and it's a mere morbid fancy." "It's a mere morbid fancy----!" Mrs. Chantry gobbled down this formula. I felt that I was giving her another still more acceptable, and which she as promptly adopted, when I added that Louisa would soon get over it. I may as well say at once that Louisa never got over it. There followed an extraordinary week, which I look back upon as one of the most uncomfortable of my life. The doctor had something to say about the action of his patient's heart--it was weak and slightly irregular, and he was anxious to learn whether she had lately been exposed to any violent shock or emotion--but he could give no name to the disorder under the influence of which she had begun unmistakably to sink. She lay on the sofa in her room--she refused to go to bed, and in the absence of complications it was not insisted on--utterly white, weak and abstracted, shaking her head at all suggestion, waving away all nourishment save the infinitesimally little that enabled her to stretch out her hand from time to time (at intervals of very unequal length) and begin "Mother, mother!" as if she were mustering courage for a supreme confession. The courage never came; she was haunted by a strange impulse to speak, which in turn was checked on her lips by some deeper horror or some stranger fear. She seemed to seek relief spasmodically from some unforgettable consciousness and then to find the greatest relief of all in impenetrable silence. I knew these things only from her mother, for before me (I went gently in and out of her room two or three times a day) she gave no sign whatever. The little local doctor, after the first day, acknowledged himself at sea and expressed a desire to consult with a colleague at Exeter.