"
"Frightens you!" growing very pale. "How? Is she so violent?"
"No; it's the other way. She's so still; she's like one dead in life.
She sits all day, and never moves nor speaks. She doesn't eat enough to
keep a bird alive, and she never sleeps, I believe; for, go into her
room night or day, there you find her sitting wide awake."
Dr. Oleander looked white with dismay.
"Does she never speak?" he asked.
"She never spoke to me but once, and that was to ask me who I was. When
I told her I was your mother, she turned her back upon me, with the
remark, 'He says I'm mad, and surely none but a mad-woman would look
for mercy from a tiger's dam!' She has never spoken to me since."
Dr. Oleander stood listening with a very gloomy face. Mrs. Sharpe,
sitting warming herself before the fire, looked straight at it, with
a blank, sallow face.
"What do you find her doing mostly?" he asked, after awhile.
"Sitting by the window, looking at the sea," answered his
mother--"always that--with a face the color of snow."
The gloom on the young man's face deepened.
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