The Doctor stood beside me, and talked about me to Richard with as much freedom as if I had been a corpse.
"I may as well be frank with you," he said, after a few moments of examination. "I apprehend great trouble from the brain. How long has she been in this condition?"
"She has been unlike herself since yesterday; as soon as I saw her, at seven o'clock last night, I noticed she was looking badly. She answered me in an abstracted, odd way, and was unlike herself, as I have said. But she had been under much excitement for some time."
"Tell me, if you please, all about it; and how long she has been under this excitement."
"She has been often agitated, and quite overstrained in feeling for some time. Three weeks ago I thought her looking badly. Two days ago she had a frightful shock--a suicide--which she was the first to discover. Since then I do not think that she has slept."
"Ah! poor young lady. She has had a terrible experience, and is paying for it. Now for what we can do for her. In the first place, who takes care of her?" with a look about the room.
"You may well ask. I have just brought her home, and find here, the man-servant ill, one woman too old and inactive to perform much service, and another to whom I would not trust her for a moment. I must ask _you_, who shall I get to take care of her?"
"You have no friend, no one to whom you could send in such a case? One of life and death,--I hope you understand?"
"None," answered Richard, with a groan. "There is not a person in the city to whom I could send for help. All my family--all our friends, are away. Is there no one that can be got for money--any money? no nurse that you could recommend?"
"I have a list of twenty. Yesterday I sent to every one, for a dangerous case of hemorrhage, and could not find one disengaged. It may be to-morrow night before you get on the track of one that is at liberty, if you hunt the city over. And this girl is in need of instant care; her life hangs on it, you must see."
"In God's name, then," said Richard, with a groan, pacing up and down the room, "what am I to do?"
"In _His_ name, if you come, to that," said the Doctor, who was a good sort of man, notwithstanding his professional cool ways, "there is a sisterhood, that I am told offer to do things like this. I never sent to them, for I only heard of it a short time ago; but if you have no objection to crosses, and caps, and ritualistic nonsense in its highest flower, I have no doubt, that they will let you have a sister, and that she'll do good service here."