ed:
"Sometimes I have my doubts----"

"About her sanity?" she demanded, reddening.

He nodded gravely.

"Really, doctor?" she exclaimed, in well-feigned astonishment. "Then why
should she be in such a place as this?"

The physician made no reply, but, turning to the superintendent, handed
him a bundle of administration papers, which the latter proceeded to
read. Mrs. Marsh quietly took a seat, awaiting her opportunity when she
could approach the desk and request that Paula be sent for.

It was not without a severe struggle with her conscience that Mrs. Marsh
had summoned up courage to come to "Sea Rest." While in a sense she was
privy to the conspiracy which had robbed her niece of her liberty, she
had known only vaguely what Jimmy and Cooley were doing. They were
fighting for the control of the Marsh millions, that was all she cared
to know. If her niece, who had come to America uninvited, got the worst
of it, that was her affair. It was Tod who had awakened her to the full
enormity of the crime which her husband and the lawyer had committed,
and after that her conscience knew no peace. Mrs. Marsh was not a bad
woman at heart. She was vain and luxury-loving, she had been weak and
foolish, and she had allowed herself to be governed, to a great extent,
by Jimmy's loose code of morals. But she was not utterly depraved. Ever
since the day she married Jimmy, she had known that her husband was
unscrupulous, but that he would go as far as this she had never dreamed.
While she might have overlooked his less important peccadilloes, she was
determined not to follow him further in his course of crime. They were
in a desperate predicament for money, but that made no difference. She
would rather sell everything she had in the world and be reduced to
beggary rather than remain an accomplice in such a diabolical action as
subjecting a perfectly sane young girl to the horrors of a lunatic
asylum. Already she had had a stormy scene with Jimmy. She told him
plainly that she had done with him, that she despised him and would
leave him forever. And now, at Tod's earnest entreaties, she had come
herself to "Sea Rest" to find out what she could do to right a great
wrong and help the poor motherless girl who was the victim of two
scoundrels.

She was thus absorbed in her reflections when a loud chuckle close by
her ear caused her to look up with a start. It was Tod who had returned
after seeing Mr. Ricaby off. With a chortle of satisf