“It is a dangerous illness,” said Mr. Merrick, with an emphasis on the word.

He drew his chair nearer to Kirke and looked at him attentively.

“May I ask you some questions which are not strictly medical?” he inquired.

Kirke bowed.

“Can you tell me what her life has been before she came into this house, and before she fell ill?”

“I have no means of knowing.  I have just returned to England after a long absence.”

“Did you know of her coming here?”

“I only discovered it by accident.”

“Has she no female relations?  No mother? no sister? no one to take care of her but yourself?”

“No one—­unless I can succeed in tracing her relations.  No one but myself.”

Mr. Merrick was silent.  He looked at Kirke more attentively than ever.  “Strange!” thought the doctor.  “He is here, in sole charge of her—­and is this all he knows?”

Kirke saw the doubt in his face; and addressed himself straight to that doubt, before another word passed between them,

“I see my position here surprises you,” he said, simply.  “Will you consider it the position of a relation—­the position of her brother or her father—­until her friends can be found?” His voice faltered, and he laid his hand earnestly on the doctor’s arm.  “I have taken this trust on myself,” he said; “and as God shall judge me, I will not be unworthy of it!”

The poor weary head lay on his breast again, the poor fevered fingers clasped his hand once more, as he spoke those words.

“I believe you,” said the doctor, warmly.  “I believe you are an honest man.—­Pardon me if I have seemed to intrude myself on your confidence.  I respect your reserve—­from this moment it is sacred to me.  In justice to both of us, let me say that the questions I have asked were not prompted by mere curiosity.  No common cause will account for the illness which has laid my patient on that bed.  She has suffered some long-continued mental trial, some wearing and terrible suspense—­and she has broken down under it.  It might have helped me if I could have known what the nature of the trial was, and how long or how short a time elapsed before she sank under it.  In that hope I spoke.”

“When you told me she was dangerously ill,” said Kirke, “did you mean danger to her reason or to her life?”

“To both,” replied Mr. Merrick.  “Her whole nervous system has given way; all the ordinary functions of her brain are in a state of collapse.  I can give you no plainer explanation than that of the nature of the malady.  The fever which frightens the people of the house is merely the effect.  The cause is what I have told you.  She may lie on that bed for weeks to come; passing alternately, without a gleam of consciousness, from a state of delirium to a state of repose.  You must not be alarmed if you find her sleep lasting far beyond the natural time.  That sleep is a better remedy than any I can give, and nothing must disturb it.  All our art can accomplish is to watch her, to help her with stimulants from time to time, and to wait for what Nature will do.”