What is he going to do with her after that?"
Julian himself, if it had been put to him at the moment, could not have answered the question.
Lady Janet's anxiety was far from being relieved when Mercy had been restored to her senses and conducted to her own room.
Mercy's mind remained in a condition of unreasoning alarm, which it was impossible to remove.
Over and over again she was told that the woman who had terrified her had left the house, and would never be permitted to enter it more; over and over again she was assured that the stranger's frantic assertions were regarded by everybody about her as unworthy of a moment's serious attention.
She persisted in doubting whether they were telling her the truth.
A shocking distrust of her friends seemed to possess her.
She shrunk when Lady Janet approached the bedside. She shuddered when Lady Janet kissed her.
She flatly refused to let Horace see her.
She asked the strangest questions about Julian Gray, and shook her head suspiciously when they told her that he was absent from the house.
At intervals she hid her face in the bedclothes and murmured to herself piteously,
"Oh, what shall I do?
What shall I do?"
At other times her one petition was to be left alone.
"I want nobody in my room"—that was her sullen cry—"nobody in my room."
The evening advanced, and brought with it no change for the better.
Lady Janet, by the advice of Horace, sent for her own medical adviser.
The doctor shook his head.
The symptoms, he said, indicated a serious shock to the nervous system.
He wrote a sedative prescription; and he gave (with a happy choice of language) some sound and safe advice.
It amounted briefly to this:
"Take her away, and try the sea-side."
Lady Janet's customary energy acted on the advice, without a moment's needless delay.
She gave the necessary directions for packing the trunks overnight, and decided on leaving Mablethorpe House with Mercy the next morning.
Shortly after the doctor had taken his departure a letter from Julian, addressed to Lady Janet, was delivered by private messenger.
Beginning with the necessary apologies for the writer's absence, the letter proceeded in these terms:
"Before I permitted my companion to see the lawyer, I felt the necessity of consulting him as to my present position toward her first.
"I told him—what I think it only right to repeat to you—that I do not feel justified in acting on my own opinion that her mind is deranged.
In the case of this friendless woman I want medical authority, and, more even than that, I want some positive proof, to satisfy my conscience as well as to confirm my view.
"Finding me obstinate on this point, the lawyer undertook to consult a physician accustomed to the treatment of the insane, on my behalf.
"After sending a message and receiving the answer, he said,
'Bring the lady here—in half an hour; she shall tell her story to the doctor instead of telling it to me.'
The proposal rather staggered me; I asked how it was possible to induce her to do that.
He laughed, and answered,
'I shall present the doctor as my senior partner; my senior partner will be the very man to advise her.'
You know that I hate all deception, even where the end in view appears to justify it.
On this occasion, however, there was no other alternative than to let the lawyer take his own course, or to run the risk of a delay which might be followed by serious results.
"I waited in a room by myself (feeling very uneasy, I own) until the doctor joined me, after the interview was over.
"His opinion is, briefly, this:
"After careful examination of the unfortunate creature, he thinks that there are unmistakably symptoms of mental aberration.
But how far the mischief has gone, and whether her case is, or is not, sufficiently grave to render actual restraint necessary, he cannot positively say, in our present state of ignorance as to facts.
"'Thus far,' he observed, 'we know nothing of that part of her delusion which relates to Mercy Merrick.
The solution of the difficulty, in this case, is to be found there.
I entirely agree with the lady that the inquiries of the consul at Mannheim are far from being conclusive.
Furnish me with satisfactory evidence either that there is, or is not, such a person really in existence as Mercy Merrick, and I will give you a positive opinion on the case whenever you choose to ask for it.'
"Those words have decided me on starting for the Continent and renewing the search for Mercy Merrick.
"My friend the lawyer wonders jocosely whether I am in my right senses.
His advice is that I should apply to the nearest magistrate, and relieve you and myself of all further trouble in that way.
"Perhaps you agree with him?
My dear aunt (as you have often said), I do nothing like other people.