Page:What will he do with it.djvu/668

658 in a rough great-coat, and then hurrying off, followed by the stranger)—came back to report his ill success, Hartopp and George had led Waife upstairs into his sleeping-room, laid him down on his bed, and were standing beside him watching his troubled face, and whispering to each other in alarm.

Waife overheard Hartopp proposing to go in search of medical assistance, and exclaimed, piteously, "No, that would scare me to death. No doctors—no eavesdroppers. Leave me to myself—quiet and darkness; I shall be well to-morrow."

George drew the curtains round the bed, and Waife caught him by the arm. "You will not let out what you heard, I know; you understand how little I can now care for men's judgments; but how dreadful it would be to undo all I have done—I to be witness against my Lizzy's child! I—I! I trust you—dear, dear Mr. Morley; make Mr. Hartopp sensible that, if he would not drive me mad, not a syllable of what he heard must go forth—'twould be base in him."

"Nay!" said Hartopp, whispering also through the dark—"Don't fear me; I will hold my peace, though 'tis very hard not to tell Williams, at least, that you did not take me in. But you shall be obeyed."

They drew away Merle, who was wondering what the whispered talk was about, catching a word or two here and there, and left the old man not quite to solitude—Waife's hand, in quitting George's grasp, dropped on the dog's head.

Hartopp went back to his daughter's home in a state of great excitement, drinking more wine than usual at dinner, talking more magisterially than he had ever been known to talk, railing quite misanthropically against the world; observing that Williams had become insufferably overbearing, and should be pensioned off: in short, casting the whole family into the greatest perplexity to guess what had come to the mild man. Merle found himself a lodging, and cast a horary scheme as to what would happen to Waife and himself for the next three months, and found all the aspects so perversely contradictory, that he owned he was no wiser as to the future than he was before the scheme was cast. George Morley remained in the Cottage, stealing up, from time to time, to Waife's room, but not fatiguing him with talk. Before midnight the old man slept, but his slumber was much disturbed, as if by fearful dreams. However, he rose early, very weak, but free from fever, and in full possession of his reason. To George's delight, Waife's first words to him then were expressive of a wish to return to Sophy. "He had dreamed," he said, "that he had heard her voice calling out