Diana Enderby tried reproofs for her flightiness, but
only made her worse; with Dermot she would only make ridiculous
nonsense, and utter those heartrending laughs; and when I tried to
soothe her, and speak low and quietly, she started away from me,
showed me her foreign purchases, or sang snatches of comic songs.
Dermot went at last to consult the same doctor to whom, half a year
before, he had taken Harold; and it was contrived that he should see
and hear her at a dinner-party without her knowledge. He consoled us
very much by saying that her mind was not touched, and that it was a
fever on the nerves, produced by the never having succumbed to the
unhappiness and the shock which, when he heard in what manner she had
lost Harold, he considered quite adequate to produce such effects.
Indeed, he had been so much struck with Harold himself, that he was
quite startled to hear of his death, and seemed to think an excess of
grief only his due. He bade us take her to her home, give her no
external excitement, and leave her as much as possible to go her own
way, and let her feel herself unwatched, and, if we could, find her
some new yet calming, engrossing occupation.
We took the advice, and poor Lady Diana besought us to remain with
her for the present; nor, indeed, could we have left her. Our chief
care was to hinder her oppressing her daughter with her anxiety; for
we found that Viola was so jealous of being watched that she would
hardly have tolerated us, but that I had real business in packing up
my properties at Mount Eaton.
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