Thus his brain laboured through the dead hours of the night, viewing and
reviewing these scenes and figures, to extract a meaning from them; but
he was no nearer the heart of the mystery when the morning broke and he
was waked by the shrill chatter of the sparrows. The day, however,
brought an event which shed a lurid light upon the Courtney difficulty,
and revealed a vital connection between facts which Lefevre had not
guessed were related.
Chapter V.
The Remarkable Case of Lady Mary Fane.
It was the kind of day that is called seasonable. If the sun had been
obscured, the air would have been felt to be wintry; but the sunshine
was full and warm, and so the world rejoiced, and declared it was a
perfectly lovely May day,--just as a man who is charmed with the smiles
and beauty of a woman, thinks her complete though she may have a heart
of ice. Lefevre, as he went his hospital round that afternoon, found his
patients revelling in the sunlight like flies. He himself was in
excellent spirits, and he said a cheery or facetious word here and there
as he passed, which gave infinite delight to the thin and bloodless
atomies under his care; for a joke from so serious and awful a being as
the doctor is to a desponding patient better than all the drugs of the
pharmacopoeia: it is as exquisite and sustaining as a divine text of
promise to a religious enthusiast.
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