“‘They don’t usually survive ling,’ he wrote, and he made me his next heir after Nina’s death.  It was a great charge for one just twenty-two, a young, helpless girly and an immense fortune to look after; but Griswold, my tied friend, came to my aid, and pointed out means by which a large portion of the Bernard estate could be turned into money, and thus save me much trouble.  I followed his advice, and then old homestead is all the landed property there is for me to attend to now, and as this is under the supervision of a competent overseer, it give me no uneasiness.  I suggested to Nina that she should accompany me to Florida soon after her arrival in Boston, but she preferred remaining for a time in some boarding school, and I made arrangements for her to be received as a boarder in Charlestown Seminary, leaving her there while I went South to transact business incumbent upon me as her guardian.

“How it happened I never knew, but by some accident her father’s letter to me became mixed up with her papers, and while I was gone she read it, learning for the first time what the mystery was which hung over her mother’s fate, and also of the doom awaiting her.  She fainted, it was said, and during the illness which followed raved in frantic fury, suffering no one to approach her save Griswold, who, being at that time a physician in the Lunatic Asylum at Worcester, hastened to her side, acquiring over her a singular power.  It is strange that in her fits of violence she never speaks of me, nor yet of Charlie Hudson.  Indeed, the past seems all a blank to her, save as she refers to it incidentally as she has to-day.”

“But did she stay crazy?” asked Edith.

“Not wholly so,” returned Arthur, “but from that time her reason began to fail, until now she is hopelessly insane, and has not known a rational moment for more than three years.”

“Nor been home in all that time?” said Edith, while Arthur replied,

“She would not go.  She seemed to shrink from meeting her former friends; and at last, acting upon Griswold’s advice, I placed her in the Asylum, going myself hither and thither like a feather tossed about by the gale.  Griswold was my ballast, my polar star, and when he said to me, buy a house and have a home, I answered that I would; and when he told me of Grassy Spring, bidding me purchase it, I did so, although I dreaded coming to this neighborhood of all others.  I had carefully kept everything from Grace, who, while hearing that I was in some way interested in a Florida estate, knew none of the particulars, and I became morbidly jealous lest she or anyone else should hear of Nina’s misfortune, or what she was to me.