“Ah! you see; even you have noticed it.”

“Yes; but he ain’t mad, though,” Cuckoo concluded, with an echo of that obstinacy which she could never completely conquer.  She said what she felt.  She could not help it.  The doctor was in no wise offended by this unskilled opinion opposed to his skilled one.  He even smiled slightly.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“He’s too sharp.  He’s a sight too sharp.”

“Madmen are very cunning.”

“So are women,” Cuckoo exclaimed.  “I could see if a man was mad.”

She was a little intoxicated with the swift motion, the bright sun, the keen air, the clang of the horse’s hoofs on the hard roads, and, most of all, with this conference which the befurred coachman was on no account to hear.  This made her hold fast to her opinion, with no thought of being rude or presuming.  The doctor, accustomed to have duchesses and others hanging upon his words of wisdom, was whipped into a refreshed humour by this odd attitude of an ignorant girl, and he replied with extreme vivacity: 

“You will think as I do one day.  Meanwhile listen to me.  When Mr. Cresswell came to you and broke out into this tirade, which you say you remember, on the subject of will, did he not show any excitement?”

“Eh?”

“Did he get excited, very hot and eager?  Did he speak unusually loud, or make any curious gestures with his hands?  Did he do anything, that you can remember, such as an ordinary man would not do?”

“Why, yes,” Cuckoo answered.  “So he did.”

“Ah!  What was it?  What did he do?”

“Well, after he’d been talkin’ a bit he caught hold of me and pulled me in front of the glass.  See?”

“Yes, yes.”

“And he made me look into it.”

“What for?”

But at this point Cuckoo got restive.

“I—­I can’t remember,” she murmured, almost sullenly, recalling Valentine’s bitter sarcasms on her appearance and way of life.

“Never mind, then.  Leave that.  But after; what came next?”

“While we was standin’ like that he seemed to get frightened or somethin’, like he saw somethin’ in the glass.  He was frightened, scared, and he hit out all on a sudden, just where my face was in the glass, and smashed it.”

“Smashed the glass?”

“Yes.  And then he snatched hold of me and looked in my eyes awful queer, and then he burst out laughin’ and says as the mirror was tellin’ him lies.  That’s all.”

“He was perfectly sober?”

“Oh, he hadn’t been on the booze.”

“Sober and did that, and then you can tell me that there is no madness in him.”

The doctor spoke almost in a bantering tone, but Cuckoo stuck to her guns.

“I don’t think it,” she said, with her under lip sticking out.

“Well, Miss Bright, I want you to assume something.”

“What’s that?”

“To pretend to yourself that you think something, whether you do really think it or not.”