“No!” cried Richard, “there’s not a moment to be lost!” and as he said it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering indistinctly of faintness, and that there was no time to lose.  Tom lifted him in his arms, and got admission to the inn.  Brandy, the country’s specific, was advised by host and hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving him sufficiently to cry out, “Tom! the bell’s ringing:  we shall be late,” after which he fell back insensible on the sofa where they had stretched him.  Excitement of blood and brain had done its work upon him.  The youth suffered them to undress him and put him to bed, and there he lay, forgetful even of love; a drowned weed borne onward by the tide of the hours.  There his father found him.

Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful?  He had looked forward to such a crisis as that point in the disease his son was the victim of, when the body would fail and give the spirit calm to conquer the malady, knowing very well that the seeds of the evil were not of the spirit.  Moreover, to see him and have him was a repose after the alarm Benson had sounded.  “Mark!” he said to Lady Blandish, “when he recovers he will not care for her.”

The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing of Richard’s seizure.

“What an iron man you can be,” she exclaimed, smothering her intuitions.  She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at least, if he would only get well and be the bright flower of promise he once was.

“Can you look on him,” she pleaded, “can you look on him and persevere?”

It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply.  The youth lay in his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on his cheeks, and altered eyes.

Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter.  The old doctor did admit that Richard’s constitution was admirable, and answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician.  “But,” he said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young man, “drugs are not much in cases of this sort.  Change!  That’s what’s wanted, and as soon as may be.  Distraction!  He ought to see the world, and know what he is made of.  It’s no use my talking, I know,” added the doctor.

“On the contrary,” said Sir Austin, “I am quite of your persuasion.  And the world he shall see—­now.”

“We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor,” Adrian remarked.

“But, doctor,” said Lady Blandish, “have you known a case of this sort before.”

“Never, my lady,” said the doctor, “they’re not common in these parts.  Country people are tolerably healthy-minded.”

“But people—­and country people—­have died for love, doctor?”

The doctor had not met any of them.