On the way to Forest Road my companion showed no fear. I can be paternal⁠—no man more so⁠—when I please, and I was intensely paternal on this occasion. What titles I had to her confidence! I had compounded the medicine which had done her good⁠—I had warned her of her danger from Sir Percival. Perhaps I trusted too implicitly to these titles⁠—perhaps I underrated the keenness of the lower instincts in persons of weak intellect⁠—it is certain that I neglected to prepare her sufficiently for a disappointment on entering my house. When I took her into the drawing-room⁠—when she saw no one present but Madame Fosco, who was a stranger to her⁠—she exhibited the most violent agitation; if she had scented danger in the air, as a dog scents the presence of some creature unseen, her alarm could not have displayed itself more suddenly and more causelessly. I interposed in vain. The fear from which she was suffering I might have soothed, but the serious heart-disease, under which she laboured, was beyond the reach of all moral palliatives. To my unspeakable horror she was seized with convulsions⁠—a shock to the system, in her condition, which might have laid her dead at any moment at our feet.