We must now return to Ida May, dear reader, and the thrilling
experiences the poor girl was passing through in the lonely stone house
on the river-road.
Owing to the drug which was being constantly administered to her, from
the hour she crossed the threshold Ida knew little or nothing of what
was going on in the outside world.
The days lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months.
Her remittances came regularly; still, the "doctor" of the sanitarium
was heartily sick of his bargain. He dared not refuse Nannie Rogers'
request to keep her there, for reasons which would put him behind the
prison bars had they reached the ears of the authorities.
When he saw the girl grow whiter and more fragile with each passing
day, his alarm increased.
In this horrible place Ida May wore out four long and weary months of
her young life.
They had long since ceased giving her the drug. It was unnecessary now
to waste any more of it upon her.
When Ida May's mind slowly cleared, and a realization of what was going
on about her came to her, she looked in the greatest astonishment at
the strange apartment and the grim-faced woman who was bringing food
to her.
"Where am I, and who are you?" she asked. "Oh, I remember! I swooned on
the steps of the boarding-house. Did _he_ have me brought here?"
"Yes," retorted the doctor's sister, thinking that the better way of
stopping all questioning.
A bitter cry of horror rose to Ida May's lips.
"Then I must go away from here at once!" she declared, attempting to
gain her feet.
But she was so weak that she staggered and would have fallen had not
the woman sprung forward and saved her.
"Don't go on in that way," said the woman, brusquely. "You are to
remain here until you are--well. It won't be over a fortnight longer.
You've been here some time."
"But I _will not_ remain here!" exclaimed Ida May, excitedly. "I shall
leave at once!"
The woman turned the key in the lock, coolly removed it, and slipping
it into her pocket, remarked:
"This is a sanitarium. It is not for patients to say when they shall
leave here. _That_ is the doctor's business."
"But tell me, why does any one wish to keep me here?" cried Ida May,
piteously. "No one in the whole world has any interest in me."
"I am surprised to hear you say that," declared the woman, grimly, with
something very much like a sneer in her harsh voice.
The words, the tone in which they were uttered, and the look which
accompanied them, cut the poor girl to the heart.
"Let me tell you about the man who brought me here," cried Ida,
trembling like a leaf, believing it must certainly be her sworn enemy,
Frank Garrick, who had taken cruelly taken advantage of her to abduct
her when she swooned on the boarding-house stoop.
"I have no time to listen to you," exclaimed the woman. "We are
strictly forbidden to talk to the patients or listen to their tales of
woe, which are always woven out of whole cloth."
"You are a woman like myself," cried Ida May, sobbing bitterly. "Surely
you can not find it in your heart to turn a deaf ear to me, for pity's
sake, if for nothing else."
But the woman was inexorable, and said:
"I tell you, I don't want to hear what you have got to say--and I
_won't_, that's all about it. If you make any fuss, you will be put on
a diet of bread and water."
"But answer me this one question," said Ida May, in terror. "What
reason has any one in keeping me here against my will?"
The woman shrugged her shoulders.
"There may be plenty of reasons," she retorted, sharply. "Perhaps you
are a wife that some man wants to be rid of. Then, again, perhaps you
are no wife--a better reason still for some young man wishing to get
you safely out of his path just now. A father or a brother may have
brought you here to save the family honor. I could go on with any
amount of practical reasons."
"Have I not told you that I am all alone in the world?" panted the poor
girl, clinging to her with death-cold hands.
"Yes; but I have good reason to think otherwise," replied the woman,
bluntly. "There's no use in your making a fuss," continued the woman,
harshly. "You may have to put in a long time beneath this roof."