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Straker?”
    “Mostly, Miss Ferrars, I act as his secretary. There is, as you can imagine, an immense amount of paperwork to be kept up. But he is the kindest, as well as the most brilliant, of men. He has been like a father to me for as long as I can remember.”
    “You knew him before you came here?”
    “No, Miss Ferrars, I was born here.”
    “Was your father a doctor, then?”
    “No, a lunatic.”
    I stared at him in astonishment.
    “Your father was confined here?”
    “In his last years, yes. But you see, Miss Ferrars, Tregannon House has only been an asylum for the past twenty years or so. Before that, it was my family home.”
    “Your home? ”
    “Yes; there have been Mordaunts here since my great-great-grandfather married a Tregannon in 1720 or thereabouts. It was an alliance of two wealthy families, which increased the standing of both. It also brought together two bloodlines marked by a strong hereditary tendency toward melancholy, violent mania, and insanity. My grandfather, George—Mad Mordaunt, they called him; the maddest of the lot—squandered a large part of the family fortune, and of his children, only my uncle Edmund was spared the worst of the affliction. But I should not be speaking thus—”
    “No, I should like you to continue,” I said. “Is your mother still alive, may I ask?”
    “I don’t know,” he replied. “I can barely remember her. She ran away, you see, with another man, when I was four years old. And who could blame her?”
    He spoke without bitterness, and my heart went out to him.
    “I am very sorry to hear it,” I said. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
    “No; Uncle Edmund and I are the only surviving Mordaunts—in this unfortunate line, at least. And my uncle’s health is failing; I fear he has not long to live.”
    “Does your uncle live here, too?”
    “Yes. He has rooms on the ground floor, which he seldom leaves these days.”
    “And—how were you brought up?” I asked.
    “By Uncle Edmund; he paid for me to be privately tutored here. I owe everything to him, and Dr. Straker. They were friends, you see, at Oxford. Dr. Straker was already deep in the study of mental disease when they met, and Uncle Edmund had vowed to do whatever he could toward the lifting of the family curse, as he calls it. They dreamt of founding an asylum on humane and enlightened principles, like the Retreat at York—you have heard of it?—”
    I had not, but I nodded, not wanting to interrupt him.
    “When the estate came to Uncle Edmund, Tregannon Asylum was established, with Dr. Straker as its chief medical officer. My uncle had complete faith in him, even though he had scarcely begun to practise. There was just enough capital left to pay for the initial conversion. My uncle used to say—though he is not given to levity—that since it was already a madhouse, we might as well make a business of it. And it has done well, over the years; there has been a great deal of new building, which I suppose is a good thing—though I would far rather see the whole place pulled down for want of patients,” he added, with a sudden access of passion.
    “And you, Mr. Mordaunt? Why do you choose to work here?”
    “The family curse, Miss Ferrars: I suffer from bouts of acute melancholia. I could not complete my medical studies, and so Dr. Straker took me on as his assistant. Here, at least, my illness is of some use; our patients find me easy to talk to. I sometimes feel, Miss Ferrars, that I am a lay brother in a strange sort of latter-day order: we no longer believe in God, but hope nevertheless for miracles—though Dr. Straker would not agree.”
    “But surely, would you not be better living—” anywhere but here, I almost said “in the world?”
    “It is natural to think so, Miss Ferrars, but my duty lies here. Dr. Straker has come to depend upon me, and besides—”
    He blushed, averting his gaze; I wondered what he had been about to say.
    “And you, Miss Ferrars?” he