At three o’clock he was still absent.  His notes went to protest, and on the next day his city creditors took possession of his effects.  One fact soon became apparent—­he had been paying the rogue’s game on a pretty liberal scale, having borrowed on his checks, from business friends and brokers, not less than sixty or seventy thousand dollars.  It was estimated, on a thorough examination of his business, that he had gone off with at least a hundred thousand dollars.  To this amount Mrs. Dinneford had contributed from her private fortune the sum of twenty thousand dollars.  Not until she had furnished him with that large amount would he consent to leave the city.  He magnified her danger, and so overcame her with terrors that she yielded to his exorbitant demand.

On the day a public newspaper announcement of Freeling’s rascality was made, Mrs. Dinneford went to bed sick of a nervous fever, and was for a short period out of her mind.

Neither Mr. Dinneford nor Edith had failed to notice a change in Mrs. Dinneford.  She was not able to hide her troubled feelings.  Edith was watching her far more closely than she imagined; and now that she was temporarily out of her mind, she did not let a word or look escape her.  The first aspect of her temporary aberration was that of fear and deprecation.  She was pursued by some one who filled her with terror, and she would lift her hands to keep him off, or hide her head in abject alarm.  Then she would beg him to keep away.  Once she said,

“It’s no use; I can’t do anything more.  You’re a vampire!”

“Who is a vampire?” asked Edith, hoping that her mother would repeat some name.

But the question seemed to put her on her guard.  The expression of fear went out of her face, and she looked at her daughter curiously.

Edith did not repeat the question.  In a little while the mother’s wandering thoughts began to find words again, and she went on talking in broken sentences out of which little could be gleaned.  At length she said, turning to Edith and speaking with the directness of one in her right mind,

“I told you her name was Gray, didn’t I?  Gray, not Bray.”

It was only by a quick and strong effort that Edith could steady her voice as she replied: 

“Yes; you said it was Gray.”

“Gray, not Bray.  You thought it was Bray.”

“But it’s Gray,” said Edith, falling in with her mother’s humor.  Then she added, still trying to keep her voice even,

“She was my nurse when baby was born.”

“Yes; she was the nurse, but she didn’t—­”

Checking herself, Mrs. Dinneford rose on one arm and looked at Edith in a frightened way, then said, hurriedly,

“Oh, it’s dead, it’s dead!  You know that; and the woman’s dead, too.”

Edith sat motionless and silent as a statue, waiting for what more might come.  But her mother shut her lips tightly, and turned her head away.