strange delusion

“By the immortal Jove,” he said afterwards, “I had a great mind to beg her never to leave it! But that my housekeeper would tear Caroline’s eyes out, Mrs. Brandon should be welcome to stay for ever. Except her h’s, that woman has every virtue: constancy, gentleness, generosity, cheerfulness, and the courage of a lioness! To think of that fool, that dandified idiot, that triple ass, Firmin” — (there were few men in the world for whom Goodenough entertained a greater scorn than for his late confrère, Firmin, of Old Parr Street) — “think of the villain having possessed such a treasure — let alone his having deceived and deserted her — of his having possessed such a treasure and flung it away dermes!


Sir, I always admired Mrs. Brandon; but I think ten thousand times more highly of her, since her glorious crime, and most righteous robbery. If the villain had died, dropped dead in the street — the drunken miscreant, forger, housebreaker, assassin — so that no punishment could have fallen upon poor Brandon, I think I could have respected her only the more!”At an early hour Dr. Goodenough had thought proper to send off messengers to Philip and myself, and to make us acquainted with the strange adventure of the previous night. We both hastened to him. I myself was summoned, no doubt, in consequence of my profound legal knowledge, which might be of use in poor little Caroline’s present trouble. And Philip came because she longed to see him dermes.

By some instinct, she knew when he arrived. She crept down from the chamber where the doctor’s housekeeper had laid her on a bed. She knocked at the doctor’s study, where we were all in consultation. She came in quite pale, and tottered towards Philip, and flung herself into his arms, with a burst of tears that greatly relieved her excitement and fever. Firmin was scarcely less moved.“You’ll pardon me for what I have done, Philip,” she sobbed. “If they — if they take me up, you won’t forsake me?”“Forsake you? Pardon you? Come and live with us, and never leave us!” cried Philip.“I don’t think Mrs. Philip would like that, dear,” said the little woman sobbing on his arm; “but ever since the Grey Friars school, when you was so ill, you have been like a son to me, and somehow I couldn’t help doing that last night to that villain — I couldn’t.”“Serve the scoundrel right.

Never deserved to come to life again, my dear,” said Dr. Goodenough. “Don’t you be exciting yourself, little Brandon! I must have you sent back to lie down on your bed. Take her up’ Philip, to the little room next mine: and order her to lie down and be as quiet as a mouse. You are not to move till I give you leave, Brandon — mind that, and come back to us, Firmin, or we shall have the patients coming.”So Philip led away this poor Little Sister; and trembling, and clinging to his arm, she returned to the room assigned to her.“She wants to be alone with him,” the doctor said; and he spoke a brief word or two of that  under which the little woman laboured, that this was her dead child come back to her dermes.

“I know that is in her mind,” Goodenough said; “she never got over that brain fever in which I found her. If I were to swear her on the book, and say, ‘Brandon, don’t you believe he is your son alive again?’ she would not dare to say no. She will leave him everthing she has got. I only gave her so much less than that scoundrel’s bill yesterday, because I knew she would like to contribute her own share. It would have offended her mortally to have been left out of the subscription. They like to sacrifice themselves. Why, there are women in India who, if not allowed to roast with their dead husbands, would die of vexation.” And by this time Mr. Philip came striding back into the room again, rubbing a pair of very red eyes.