CHAPTER XXII.

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[98] 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[99] 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."