He came and administered remedies. Then he told her privately that her brother had a serious complaint, and that agitation would one day be fatal to him.
"You must keep him quiet; he really must not be either worried or disturbed about anything," said the doctor, not unkindly, but anxious professionally, and determined to insist on his patient's having the only chance of living.
"If I can keep him quiet!" began poor Mrs. Dorriman, "but nothing I can do is of any use. Oh! indeed it is not my fault."
"Of course I do not mean to say it is," he answered hastily, "but I merely give you warning. This attack has been brought on by some violent emotion, and a repetition of it, _any_ mental excitement, will put an end to his life."
Mrs. Dorriman went to his side when the doctor had gone, a whole world of remorse and pain in her heart.
She had been several months with him now, and, though she had never really forgotten the unspoken suspicion, it had been put into a remote corner of her memory. As she looked upon him and marked the careworn face and look of struggle his attack had left, she had a sense of having been treacherous towards him. What did it really matter? Supposing those papers contained some proof against him, would it be of any use confronting him with them?
She was conscious of two things--that the whole attitude of her mind had changed towards him, and that it had also altered towards her husband.
The various scenes she had gone through at Renton had had the effect of turning her thoughts gratefully towards the affection and the peace she had had with her husband.
She began to think of him more tenderly, and to see other possible conclusions than those she had arrived at.
This awakened tenderness, which could never comfort him now, made her feel as though, if she did read those papers, she would see nothing against her husband, and this conviction took a heavy load off her mind. Then came the other part of the problem--If her husband had been blameless what was her brother?
All the long years of neglect at school, all the harshness with which he had treated her in former years, seemed to have faded now, she had softened to him so much, and now as he slowly recovered she acknowledged this.