Dr. Oleander looked at her suspiciously as he drew up before the frowning gate.

“It is lonely,” he said, carelessly.  “I told you so, you remember; but, from its very loneliness, all the better for my too excitable patient.”

Mrs. Sharpe’s face seemed to say she thought it might be more conducive to begetting melancholy madness than curing it, but her tongue said nothing.  Two big dogs, barking furiously, came tumbling round the angle of the house.  Dr. Oleander struck at them with his whip.

“Down, Tiger!  Silence, Nero, you overgrown brute!” he cried, with an angry oath.  “Come along, Mrs. Sharpe.  There’s no occasion to be alarmed; they won’t touch you.”

Mrs. Sharpe, despite this assurance, looking mortally afraid, kept close to the doctor, and stood gazing around her while waiting to be admitted.  Bolts grated, the key creaked, and heavily and warily old Peter opened the door and reconnoitered.

“It is I, Peter, you old fool!  Get out of the way, and don’t keep us waiting!”

With which rough greeting the young man strode in, followed by the nurse.

“He fetches a woman every time,” murmured old Peter, plaintively, “and we’ve got a great plenty now, Lord knows!”

“This way, ma’am,” called Dr. Oleander, striding straight, to the kitchen; “we’ll find a fire here, at least.  It’s worse than Greenland, this frigid-zone!”

Mrs. Oleander sat before the blazing fire, plucking a fowl; Sally stood at the table, kneading dough.  Both paused, with feminine exclamations, at sight of the doctor, and turned directly, with feminine curiosity, to stare at the woman.

“How do, mother?  How are you, Sally?  Back again, you see, like the proverbial bad shilling!  This is Mrs. Susan Sharpe, the nurse I promised to bring.  How’s our patient?”

He turned anxiously to his mother.  She took her eyes from Mrs. Sharpe to answer.

“I don’t know; she frightens me, Guy.”

“Frightens you!” growing very pale.  “How?  Is she so violent?”

“No; it’s the other way.  She’s so still; she’s like one dead in life.  She sits all day, and never moves nor speaks.  She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive, and she never sleeps, I believe; for, go into her room night or day, there you find her sitting wide awake.”

Dr. Oleander looked white with dismay.

“Does she never speak?” he asked.

“She never spoke to me but once, and that was to ask me who I was.  When I told her I was your mother, she turned her back upon me, with the remark, ’He says I’m mad, and surely none but a mad-woman would look for mercy from a tiger’s dam!’ She has never spoken to me since.”

Dr. Oleander stood listening with a very gloomy face.  Mrs. Sharpe, sitting warming herself before the fire, looked straight at it, with a blank, sallow face.

“What do you find her doing mostly?” he asked, after awhile.