When the first patient came back well from the seaside her rejoicing
overflowed in exultation before the friends to whom she confessed her
agency in the affair. Putney pretended that he could not see what pleasure
she could reasonably take in restoring the child to the sort of life it had
been born to; but that was a matter she would not consider, theoretically
or practically.
She began to go outside of Dr. Morrell's authority; she looked up two cases
herself, and, upon advising with their grandmothers, sent them to the
seaside, and she was at the station when the train came in with the young
mother and the still younger aunt of one of the sick children. She did
not see the baby, and the mother passed her with a stare of impassioned
reproach, and fell sobbing on the neck of her husband, waiting for her on
the platform. Annie felt the blood drop back upon her heart. She caught at
the girlish aunt, who was looking about her with a sense of the interest
which attached to herself as a party to the spectacle.
"Oh, Rebecca, where is the child?"
"Well, there, Miss Kilburn, I'm _ril_ sorry to tell you, but I guess
the sea-air didn't do it a great deal of good, if any. I tell Maria she'll
see it in the right light after a while, but of course she can't, first
off. Well, there! _Somebody's_ got to look after it. You'll excuse
_me_, Miss Kilburn."
Annie saw her run off to the baggage-car, from which the baggage-man was
handing out a narrow box. The ground reeled under her feet; she got the
public depot carriage and drove home.
She sent for Dr. Morrell, and poured out the confession of her error upon
him before he could speak. "I am a murderess," she ended hysterically.
"Don't deny it!"
"I think you can be got off on the ground of insanity, Miss Kilburn, if you
go on in this way," he answered.
Her desperation broke in tears. "Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do? I've
killed the child!"
"Oh no, you haven't," he retorted. "I know the case. The only hope for it
was the sea-air; I was going to ask you to send it--"
She took down her handkerchief and gave him a piercing look. "Dr. Morrell,
if you are lying to me--"
"I'm not lying, Miss Kilburn," he answered. "You've done a very
unwarrantable thing in both of the cases that you sent to the seaside on
your own responsibility. One of them I certainly shouldn't have advised
sending, but it's turned out well. You've no more credit for it, though,
than for this that died; and you won't think I'm lying, perhaps, when I say
you're equally to blame in both instances."