You remember Rachel, my first wife,--don't you, Fordyce ?" "No, father, I don't remember her, but I know her portrait." (As he was the son of the old Doctor's second wife, he could hardly be expected to remember her predecessor.) The old Doctor's sagacity was not in fault about the somewhat threatening aspect of Myrtle's condition.

His directions were followed implicitly; for with the exception of the fact of sluggishness rather than loss of memory, and of that confusion of dates which in slighter degrees is often felt as early as middle-life, and increases in most persons from year to year, his mind was still penetrating, and his advice almost as trustworthy, as in his best days.
It was very fortunate that the old Doctor ordered Myrtle's hair to be cut, and Miss Silence took the scissors and trimmed it at once.

So, whenever she got well and was seen about, there would be no mystery about the loss of her locks,--the Doctor had been afraid of brain fever, and ordered them to cut her hair.
Many things are uncertain in this world, and among them the effect of a large proportion of the remedies prescribed by physicians.

Whether it was by the use of the means ordered by the old Doctor, or by the efforts of nature, or by both together, at any rate the first danger was averted, and the immediate risk from brain fever soon passed over.
But the impression upon her mind and body had been too profound to be dissipated by a few days' rest.

The hysteric stage which the wise old man had apprehended began to manifest itself by its usual signs, if anything can be called usual in a condition the natural order of which is disorder and anomaly.
And now the reader, if such there be, who believes in the absolute independence and self-determination of the will, and the consequent total responsibility of every human being for every irregular nervous action and ill-governed muscular contraction, may as well lay down this narrative, or he may lose all faith in poor Myrtle Hazard, and all patience with the writer who tells her story.
The mental excitement so long sustained, followed by a violent shock to the system, coming just at the period of rapid development, gave rise to that morbid condition, accompanied with a series of mental and moral perversions, which in ignorant ages and communities is attributed to the influence of evil spirits, but for the better-instructed is the malady which they call hysteria.