CHAPTER IV


On the appointed Monday we were ready to accompany my aunt to the
madhouse.

Whether she distrusted her own unaided judgment, or whether she wished to
have as many witnesses as possible to the rash action in which she was
about to engage, I cannot say. In either case, her first proceeding was
to include Mr. Hartrey and Fritz Keller in the invitation already
extended to the lawyer and myself.

They both declined to accompany us. The head-clerk made the affairs of
the office serve for his apology, it was foreign post day, and he could
not possibly be absent from his desk. Fritz invented no excuses; he
confessed the truth, in his own outspoken manner. "I have a horror of mad
people," he said, "they so frighten and distress me, that they make me
feel half mad myself. Don't ask me to go with you--and oh, dear lady,
don't go yourself."

My aunt smiled sadly--and led the way out.

We had a special order of admission to the Hospital which placed the
resident superintendent himself at our disposal. He received my aunt with
the utmost politeness, and proposed a scheme of his own for conducting us
over the whole building; with an invitation to take luncheon with him
afterwards at his private residence.