did. Doctor St. Jean is not a very bad man, but he is a charlatan and a
dullard; he received the story of my reported insanity as he received
me, as an advantage to his institution, and he never gave himself the
unprofitable trouble to investigate the circumstances. I told him the
truth about myself as calmly as I now speak to you, but somebody else
had told him that this truth was the fiction of a deranged imagination,
and he found it more convenient and profitable to believe somebody
else. But again I ask you, why were not you, also, so discreetly
obtuse?"

"Madam," said Traverse, blushing ingenuously, "I hope you will forgive
me for saying that it is impossible any one could see you without
becoming deeply interested in your fate. Your face, Madam, speaks
equally of profound sorrows and of saintly resignation. I saw no sign
of madness there. In the calm depths of those sad eyes, lady, I knew
that the fires of insanity never could have burned. Pardon me that I
looked at you so closely; I was your physician, and was most deeply
anxious concerning my patient."

"I thank you; may the Lord bless you! Perhaps he has sent you here for
my relief, for you are right, young friend--you are altogether right; I
have been wild with grief, frantic with despair, but never for one hour
in the whole course of my life have I been insane."

"I believe you, Madam, on my sacred honor I do!" said Traverse,
fervently.

"And yet you could get no one about this place to believe you! They
have taken my brother-in-law's false story, indorsed as it is by the
doctor-proprietor, for granted. And just so long as I persist in
telling my true story, they will consider me a monomaniac, and so often
as the thought of my many wrongs and sorrows combines with the nervous
irritability to which every woman is occasionally subject, and makes me
rave with impatience and excitement, they will report me a dangerous
lunatic, subject to periodical attacks of violent frenzy; but, young
man, even at my worst, I am no more mad than any other woman, wild with
grief and hysterical through nervous irritation, might at any time
become without having her sanity called in question."

"I am sure that you are not, nor ever could have been, Madam. The
nervous excitement of which you speak is entirely within the control of
medicine, which mania proper is not. You will use the means that I
prescribe and your continued calmness will go far to convince even
these dullar