Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/272

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
262
THE GRAY MASK

Garth said. "She followed too quickly her ruling impulse to punish the man she blamed for her tragic situation. Moreover, the realization of what she had done, as is common in such cases, returned her to approximate sanity, suggested, even without her mother's prompting, Taylor's California blind as a road from her dreadful dilemma. And McDonald's daughter, through her fright and a promise of money, could be persuaded to avoid arousing her father or Clara, to throw on one of Mrs. Taylor's dresses, to hurry with her to Albany. Evidently the girl lost her nerve, for she was to have come back as if nothing had happened. She was to have taken care of Mrs. Taylor. Eventually she was to have placed her in a sanitarium, explaining her breakdown, as well as any present peculiarities, naturally enough through the shock of her husband's suicide. It was McDonald's demands to know what had happened to his daughter that made Mrs. Taylor turn on him finally. If he had been able to speak then I think he would have broken faith with his dead master and told us the truth about her condition."

"Is there any hope for her?" Nora asked.

"I've asked the doctor," Garth answered. "He says that the studied manner in which she threw us off the track when we caught her crying over McDonald, and her failure to lose complete control of herself when she was arrested indicate that her trouble is curable. It seems to have been brought on by her intolerable life in this gloomy house with