“Yes, Lady Bellamy.”

“Then tell me why cannot I move my arms.”

He lifted her hand; it fell again like a lump of lead—­and Dr. Williamson looked very grave.  Then he applied a current of electricity.

“Do you feel that?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Why cannot I move?  Do not trifle with me, tell me quick.”

Dr. Williamson was a young man, and had not quite conquered nervousness.  In his confusion, he muttered something about “paralysis.”

“How is it that I am not dead?”

“I have brought you back to life, but pray do not talk.”

“You fool, why could you not let me die?  You mean that you have brought my mind to life, and left my body dead.  I feel now that I am quite paralysed.”

He could not answer her, what she said was only too true, and his look told her so.  She gazed steadily at him for a moment as he bent over her, and realized all the horrors of her position, and for the first time in her life her proud spirit absolutely gave way.  For a few seconds she was silent, and then, without any change coming over the expression of her features—­for the wild gaze with which she had faced eternity was for ever frozen there—­she broke out into a succession of the most heart-rending shrieks that it had ever been his lot to listen to.  At last she stopped exhausted.

“Kill me!” she whispered, hoarsely, “kill me!”

It was a dreadful scene.

As the doctors afterwards concluded, rightly or wrongly, a very curious thing had happened to Lady Bellamy.  Either the poison she had taken—­and they were never able to discover what its exact nature was, nor would she enlighten them—­had grown less deadly during all the years that she had kept it, or she had partially defeated her object by taking an overdose, or, as seemed more probable, there was some acid in the wine in which it had been mixed that had had the strange effect of rendering it to a certain degree innocuous.  Its result, however, was, as she guessed, to render her a hopeless paralytic for life.

At length the patient sank into the coma of exhaustion, and Dr. Williamson was able to leave her in the care of a brother practitioner whom he had sent for, and in that of his assistant.  Sir John had been sent for, but had not arrived.  It was then eleven o’clock, and at one the doctor was summoned as a witness to attend the inquest on George Caresfoot.  He had, therefore, two hours at his disposal, and these he determined to utilise by driving round to see Angela, who was still lying at Mr. Fraser’s vicarage.

Mr. Fraser heard him coming, and met him in the little drive.  He briefly told him what he had just seen, and what, in his opinion, Lady Bellamy’s fate must be—­one of living death.  The clergyman’s remark was characteristic.

“And yet,” he said, “there are people in the world who say that there is no God.”

“How is Mrs. Caresfoot?” asked the doctor.