you deprive him of money, because
he offends you?"

"Deprive him of money," repeated Mr. Pole, with ungrudging accentuation.
"Well, I've heard about women, but I never knew one so anxious for a
doctor to get his fee as you are."

Emilia wonderingly fixed her sight on him an instant, and, quite
unillumined, resumed: "Blame me, sir. But, I know you will be too kind.
Oh! I love him. So, I must love you, and I would not give you pain. It is
true he loves me. You will not see him, because he loves me?"

"The doctor?" muttered Mr. Pole. "The doctor?" he almost bellowed; and
got sharp up from his chair, and looked at himself in the glass, blinking
rapidly; and then turned to inspect Emilia.

Emilia drew him to her side again.

"Go on," he said; and there became visible in his face a frightful effort
to comprehend her, and get to the sense of her words.

And why it was so frightful as to be tragic, you will know presently.

He thought of the arrival of Braintop, freighted with brandy, as the only
light in the mist, and breathing heavily from his nose, almost snorting
the air he took in from a widened mouth, he sat and tried to listen to
her words as well as for Braintop's feet.

Emilia was growing too conscious of her halting eloquence, as the
imminence of her happiness or misery hung balancing in doubtful scales
before her.

"Oh! he loves me, and I love him," she gasped, and wondered why words
should be failing her. "See us together, sir, and hear us. We will make
you well."

The exclamation "Good Lord!" groaned out in a tone as from the lower pits
of despair, cut her short.

Tearfully she murmured: "You will not see us, sir?"

"Together?" bawled the merchant.

"Yes, I mean together."

"If you're not mad, I am." And he jumped on his legs and walked to the
farther corner of the room. "Which of us is it?" His features twitched in
horribly comic fashion. "What do you mean? I can't understand a word. My
brain must have gone;" throwing his hand over his forehead. "I've feared
so for the last four months. Good God! a lunatic asylum! and the business
torn like a piece of old rag! I know that fellow at Riga's dancing like a
cannibal, and there--there 'll be articles in the papers.--Here, girl!
come up to the light. Come here, I say."

Emilia walked up to him.

"You don't look mad. I dare say everybody else understands you. Do they?"

The sad-flushed pallor of his face provoked Emilia to say: "You ought to
have th