was delirious. The poor woman has had no
suspicion of that; but it is proved by Emily's questions, now that she
begins to talk. Of course it makes a new anxiety. Mrs. Hood has not
dared to hint at the truth, but it cannot be concealed for long.'

'But this is most extraordinary,' Wilfrid exclaimed, 'What, then, was
the origin of her illness?'

'That is the mystery. Mrs. Hood's memory seems to be confused, but I got
her to allow that the feverish symptoms were declared even the night
before the death was known. I hardly like to hint it, but it really
seemed to me as if she were keeping something back. One moment she said
that Emily had been made ill by anxiety at her father's lateness in
coming home that night, and the next she seemed, for some reason,
unwilling to admit that it was so. The poor woman is in a sad, sad
state, and no wonder. She wishes that somebody else might tell Emily the
truth; but surely it will come most easily from her.'

Wilfrid was deeply distressed.

'It is the very worst that still remains,' he said, 'and we thought the
worst was over. What does the doctor say? Can she bear it yet? It is
impossible to let her continue in ignorance.'

It was at length decided that Mrs. Baxendale should visit the doctor,
and hear his opinion. She had got into her mind a certain distrust of
Mrs. Hood, and even doubted whether Emily ought to be left in her hands
during convalescence; there was clearly no want of devotion on the
mother's part, but it appeared to Mrs. Baxendale that the poor woman had
been overtaxed, and was herself on the point of illness, perhaps of
mental failure. From going well things had suddenly taken an anxious
turn.

CHAPTER XVI

RENUNCIATION

When Emily returned from the wastes of ravaged mind, and while yet the
images of memory were hardly distinguished from the ghosts of delirious
dream, the picture that haunted her with most persistency, with an
objective reality the more impressive the clearer her thought became,
was one which she could least comprehend or account for. She saw lying
before her a closely muffled form, the outline seeming to declare it
that of a man. The struggle of new-born consciousness was to associate
such a vision with the events which had preceded her illness. Perchance
for a day, perchance only for an hour, however long the unmeasured
transition from darkness to the dawn of self-knowledge, she suffered the
oppression of this mechanical questioning