It was, however, not speculation but action that was needed then.  The apparatus described in the case of the young officer was ready, and the house-physician was waiting to give his assistance.  The stimulation of Will and Electricity was applied to resuscitate the patient—­but with the smallest success:  there was only a faint flutter, a passing slight rigidity of the muscles, and all seemed again as it had been.  The exhausting nature of the operation or experiment forbade its immediate repetition.  Disappointment pervaded the doctor’s being, though it did not appear in the doctor’s manner.

“We’ll try again in half an hour,” said he to his assistant, and turned away to complete his round of the ward.

At the end of the half-hour, Lefevre and the house-physician were again by Lady Mary’s bedside.  Again, with fine but firm touch, Lefevre stroked nerves and muscles to stimulate them into normal action; again he and his assistant put out their electrical force through the electrode; and again the result was nothing but a passing galvanic quiver.  The doctor, though he maintained his professional calm, was smitten with alarm,—­as a man is who, walking through darkness and danger to the rescue of a friend, finds himself stopped by an unscalable wall.  While he sought fresh means of help, his patient might pass beyond his reach.  He did not think she would—­he hoped she would not; but her condition, so obstinately resistant to his restoratives, was so peculiar, that he could not in the least determine the issue.  Imagination and speculation were excited, and he asked himself whether, after all, the explanation of his failure might not be of the simplest—­a difference of sex!  The secrets of nature, so far as he had discovered, were of such amazing simplicity, that it would not surprise him now to find that the electrical force of a man varied vitally from that of a woman.  He explained this suspicion to his assistant.

“I think,” said he, “we must make another attempt, for her condition may become the more serious the longer it is left.  We’ll set the Sister and the nurse to try this time, and we’ll turn her bed north and south, in the line of the earth’s magnetism.”  But just then the lady’s father, the old Lord Rivercourt, appeared in response to the doctor’s telegram, and the experiment with the women had to wait.  The old lord was naturally filled with wonder and anxiety when he saw his apparently lifeless daughter.  He was amazed that she should have been overcome by such influence as, he understood, the old gentleman must wield.  She had always, he said, enjoyed the finest health, and was as little inclined to hysteria as woman well could be.  Lefevre told the father that this was something other than hystero-hypnotism, which, while it reassured him as to his daughter’s former health, made him the more anxious regarding her present condition.

“It is very extraordinary,” said the old lord; “but whatever it is,—­and you say it is like the young man’s case that we have all read about,—­whatever it is,”—­and he laid his hand emphatically on the doctor’s arm,—­“she could not be in more capable hands than yours.”