the child to leave us. She turned away with a little sob in her throat, and a look of doglike entreaty to me in her pretty eyes.
"Dear little mite," I said to myself, "I will do all that man can do to help her." I went up to the bed and began to make a careful examination of the patient. When last I saw Miss Wilton, she was brilliant in her ball-dress. Her eyes were bright, as bright as the jewels that flashed in her hair and round her neck. Now she was in so complete a state of collapse that I could scarcely have recognised her as the same girl. Her face was so worn and thin, that for the time it had lost all its youth and comeliness. Her long hands lay motionless on the coverlet. Her sunken eyes were closed. She was scarcely breathing, and looked almost like a dead woman of forty. I bent over her and tried to rouse her. It was more than evident that she had done without morphia now for several hours. She was in a state of acute nervous disturbance—in short, she was completely prostrated. My first business was to rouse her. I put my hand under her head and raised her up. To my relief she opened her eyes and gave a perceptible start of pleasure when she saw me.
"You can save me," she said, in a weak and very thin voice. "You know what is the matter. You know what I've done. You said it the other day."
"You are a morphia-maniac," I said.
"Yes, yes—I don't care who knows now."
She suddenly pressed her hands to both her sides, and began to roll about in anguish.
"I am cramped, I am dying," she gasped.
I watched her until the paroxysm of pain was over, then I began to question her.
"Why did you send for me?"
"Because I am dying."
"Have you been taking much morphia?"
"Oh, yes, a good deal. I had a prescription. It was made up, and I injected the quantity which always gave me relief. Dr. Halifax, an awful thing has happened: the morphia no longer relieves me; it—it fills me with horror, with sickness, and cramp. I am in agonies. I dare not take any more. Each dose makes me worse."
Again she pressed her hands to her sides and writhed in torture.
I walked to the table, hoping to find the prescription. It was not there. Miss Wilton was past speaking now. I went to the door of the bedroom and called Rosamond.
"I want the prescription," I said, "of your sister's last medicine. You went out to have it made up, did you not?"
"I did—here it is. Is Frances very ill?"
"She is ill. How often has she injected this medicine?"
"Oh, several times last night, but scarcely at all to-day. She says it makes her worse, much worse. She is afraid of it. She has been in awful pain all day, and at last she called to me to fetch you. Can you—can you save her?"
"Oh, yes, dear, I hope so," I replied. I went back to the room and studied the prescription. Then I gave a sudden start of pleasure. It was a prescription for strychnine, certainly, but it could not have been the one which Nurse Collins imagined she had given Miss Wilton. The doses ordered to be injected were too small to cause death, although they would doubtless, if administered frequently, give rise to disagreeable and painful sensations. I thought hard for a moment, and then a sudden idea occurred to me. I went back to my patient and carefully noted every symptom. She had been now quite twenty-four hours without morphia; she had therefore arrived at the very height of that terrible time when the abstinence storm is worst. Every fibre, every cell in her body ought now to be crying out for its accustomed solace. The functions of the brain ought to be exhausted. Her respiration ought to be terribly hurried; her pulse almost past counting. She was ill, and in frightful suffering, without a doubt; she was also in a state of extreme prostration, but her pulse was fairly steady and was not beating more than a hundred and twenty times to the minute. When I had examined her at Holmwood two days ago, after a very much shorter period of abstinence, her pulse had beat a hundred and fifty times to the minute. The idea therefore which occurred to me was this: Nurse Collins, without the least intending it, had found a cure for my patient. If I went on administering the strychnine in very small quantities, it would undoubtedly act as a tonic, ward off the extreme weakness of the heart, which was to be dreaded, and in short enable Miss Wilton to weather the awful abstinence storm. I did not take long in making up my mind, then going into the next room, rang the electric bell. A servant answered my summons, to whom I gave a note desiring it to be sent to its destination by a special messenger without a moment's loss of time. In consequence of this note, an hour later a staid and respectable nurse, in whom I had every confidence, was installed in Miss Wilton's room. I gave
