But again Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she continued, “It’s not a time to spare when people are at death’s door, nor would you wish it, sir, I’m sure.  Else I should give him our own bottle o’ rum as we keep by us.  But a sitter-up so as you’ve been, and doing everything as laid in your power—­”

Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Mr. Bulstrode said huskily, “That is the key of the wine-cooler.  You will find plenty of brandy there.”

Early in the morning—­about six—­Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time in prayer.  Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid—­necessarily goes to the roots of action?  Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative:  who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?  Bulstrode had not yet unravelled in his thought the confused promptings of the last four-and-twenty hours.

He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing.  Then he walked out in the garden, and looked at the early rime on the grass and fresh spring leaves.  When he re-entered the house, he felt startled at the sight of Mrs. Abel.

“How is your patient—­asleep, I think?” he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness in his tone.

“He’s gone very deep, sir,” said Mrs. Abel.  “He went off gradual between three and four o’clock.  Would you please to go and look at him?  I thought it no harm to leave him.  My man’s gone afield, and the little girl’s seeing to the kettles.”

Bulstrode went up.  At a glance he knew that Raffles was not in the sleep which brings revival, but in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into the gulf of death.

He looked round the room and saw a bottle with some brandy in it, and the almost empty opium phial.  He put the phial out of sight, and carried the brandy-bottle down-stairs with him, locking it again in the wine-cooler.

While breakfasting he considered whether he should ride to Middlemarch at once, or wait for Lydgate’s arrival.  He decided to wait, and told Mrs. Abel that she might go about her work—­ he could watch in the bed-chamber.

As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace going irrevocably into silence, he felt more at rest than he had done for many months.  His conscience was soothed by the enfolding wing of secrecy, which seemed just then like an angel sent down for his relief.  He drew out his pocket-book to review various memoranda there as to the arrangements he had projected and partly carried out in the prospect of quitting Middlemarch, and considered how far he would let them stand or recall them, now that his absence would be brief.  Some economies which he felt desirable might still find a suitable occasion in his temporary withdrawal from management, and he hoped still that Mrs. Casaubon would take a large share in the expenses of the Hospital.  In that way the moments passed, until a change in the stertorous breathing was marked enough to draw his attention wholly to the bed, and forced him to think of the departing life, which had once been subservient to his own—­which he had once been glad to find base enough for him to act on as he would.  It was his gladness then which impelled him now to be glad that the life was at an end.