There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had not looked away from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a book on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress.  She started up and bounded towards him in an instant:  he was evidently in great straits for breath.  Jumping on a stool she got close to his elbow and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm—­

“Can you lean on me, dear?”

He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her, unable to speak or move, gasping for breath.  When at last he descended the three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea had drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed helpless and about to faint.  Dorothea rang the bell violently, and presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch:  he did not faint, and was gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been met in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had “had a fit in the library.”

“Good God! this is just what might have been expected,” was his immediate thought.  If his prophetic soul had been urged to particularize, it seemed to him that “fits” would have been the definite expression alighted upon.  He asked his informant, the butler, whether the doctor had been sent for.  The butler never knew his master want the doctor before; but would it not be right to send for a physician?

When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make some signs of his usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reaction from her first terror had been kneeling and sobbing by his side now rose and herself proposed that some one should ride off for a medical man.

“I recommend you to send for Lydgate,” said Sir James.  “My mother has called him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever.  She has had a poor opinion of the physicians since my father’s death.”

Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of approval.  So Mr. Lydgate was sent for and he came wonderfully soon, for the messenger, who was Sir James Chettam’s man and knew Mr. Lydgate, met him leading his horse along the Lowick road and giving his arm to Miss Vincy.

Celia, in the drawing-room, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir James told her of it.  After Dorothea’s account, he no longer considered the illness a fit, but still something “of that nature.”

“Poor dear Dodo—­how dreadful!” said Celia, feeling as much grieved as her own perfect happiness would allow.  Her little hands were clasped, and enclosed by Sir James’s as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx.  “It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did like him.  And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he ought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him—­ do you think they would?”