“This agitation will be bad for the child,” he said, speaking to himself aloud.

Lady Blandish remarked:  “I think she might just as well have returned.  She will not sleep.”

“She will control herself for the child’s sake.”

“You ask too much of her.”

“Of her, not,” he emphasized.

It was twelve o’clock when Hippies shut his watch, and said with vehemence:  “I’m convinced my circulation gradually and steadily decreases!”

“Going back to the pre-Harvey period!” murmured Adrian as he wrote.

Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would introduce them to the interior of his machinery, the eternal view of which was sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet reserve.  Taking it for acquiescence in his deplorable condition, Hippies resumed despairingly:  “It’s a fact.  I’ve brought you to see that.  No one can be more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse.  My system is organically sound—­I believe:  I do every possible thing, and yet I get worse.  Nature never forgives!  I’ll go to bed.”

The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.

Sir Austin took up his brother’s thought:  “I suppose nothing short of a miracle helps us when we have offended her.”

“Nothing short of a quack satisfies us,” said Adrian, applying wax to an envelope of official dimensions.

Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted by Lucy’s last look at him.  He got up his courage presently and went round to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose and accompanied him out of the room, shrugging.  When they had gone, Lady Blandish said to the baronet:  “He is not coming.”

“To-morrow, then, if not tonight,” he replied.  “But I say he will come to-night.”

“You do really wish to see him united to his wife?”

The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.

“Can you ask me?”

“I mean,” said, the ungenerous woman, “your System will require no further sacrifices from either of them?”

When he did answer, it was to say:  “I think her altogether a superior person.  I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one like her.”

“Admit that your science does not accomplish everything.”

“No:  it was presumptuous—­beyond a certain point,” said the baronet, meaning deep things.

Lady Blandish eyed him.  “Ah me!” she sighed, “if we would always be true to our own wisdom!”

“You are very singular to-night, Emmeline.”  Sir Austin stopped his walk in front of her.