Warwick’s friend.  With the pair of surgeons named, the most eminent of their day, in attendance, the case must be serious.  To vindicate the breaker of her pledge, his present plight likewise assured him of that, and nearing the house he adopted instinctively the funeral step and mood, just sensible of a novel smallness.  For the fortifying testimony of his passion had to be put aside, he was obliged to disavow it for a simpler motive if he applied at the door.  He stressed the motive, produced the sentiment, and passed thus naturally into hypocrisy, as lovers precipitated by their blood among the crises of human conditions are often forced to do.  He had come to inquire after Lady Dunstane.  He remembered that it had struck him as a duty, on hearing of her dangerous illness.

The door opened before he touched the bell.  Sir Lukin knocked against him and stared.

‘Ah!—­who—?—­you?’ he said, and took him by the arm and pressed him on along the gravel.  ’Dacier, are you?  Redworth’s in there.  Come on a step, come!  It’s the time for us to pray.  Good God!  There’s mercy for sinners.  If ever there was a man! . . .  But, oh, good God! she’s in their hands this minute.  My saint is under the knife.’

Dacier was hurried forward by a powerful hand.  ’They say it lasts about five minutes, four and a half—­or more!  My God!  When they turned me out of her room, she smiled to keep me calm.  She said:  “Dear husband”:  the veriest wretch and brutallest husband ever poor woman . . . and a saint! a saint on earth!  Emmy!’ Tears burst from him.

He pulled forth his watch and asked Dacier for the time.

’A minute’s gone in a minute.  It’s three minutes and a half.  Come faster.  They’re at their work!  It’s life or death.  I’ve had death about me.  But for a woman! and your wife! and that brave soul!  She bears it so.  Women are the bravest creatures afloat.  If they make her shriek, it’ll be only if she thinks I ’m out of hearing.  No:  I see her.  She bears it!—­They mayn’t have begun yet.  It may all be over!  Come into the wood.  I must pray.  I must go on my knees.’

Two or three steps in the wood, at the mossed roots of a beech, he fell kneeling, muttering, exclaiming.

The tempest of penitence closed with a blind look at his watch, which he left dangling.  He had to talk to drug his thoughts.

‘And mind you,’ said he, when he had rejoined Dacier and was pushing his arm again, rounding beneath the trees to a view of the house, ’for a man steeped in damnable iniquity!  She bears it all for me, because I begged her, for the chance of her living.  It’s my doing—­this knife!  Macpherson swears there is a chance.  Thomson backs him.  But they’re at her, cutting! . . .  The pain must be awful—­the mere pain!  The gentlest creature ever drew breath!  And women fear blood—­and her own!  And a head!  She ought to have married the best