ut myself.
And when I tell you next that I, for one, won't allow Mr. Armadale's
resurrection from the sea to be the ruin of me without a fight for it,
I tell you, my dear madam, one of the plainest truths I ever told to man
or woman in the whole course of my life. Don't suppose I am invidiously
separating my interests from yours in the common danger that now
threatens us both. I simply indicate the difference in the risk that we
have respectively run. _You_ have not sunk the whole of your resources
in establishing a Sanitarium; and _you_ have not made a false
declaration before a magistrate, which is punishable as perjury by the
law.'

"I interrupted him again. His selfishness did me more good than his tea:
it roused my temper effectually. 'Suppose we let your risk and my risk
alone, and come to the point,' I said. 'What do you mean by making a
fight for it? I see a railway guide on your table. Does making a fight
for it mean--running away?'

"'Running away?' repeated the doctor. 'You appear to forget that every
farthing I have in the world is embarked in this establishment.'

"'You stop here, then?' I said.

"'Unquestionably!'

"'And what do you mean to do when Mr. Armadale comes to England?'

"A solitary fly, the last of his race whom the winter had spared, was
buzzing feebly about the doctor's face. He caught it before he answered
me, and held it out across the table in his closed hand.

"'If this fly's name was Armadale,' he said, 'and if you had got him as
I have got him now, what would _you_ do?'

"His eyes, fixed on my face up to this time, turned significantly, as he
ended this question, to my widow's dress. I, too, looked at it when
he looked. A thrill of the old deadly hatred and the old deadly
determination ran through me again.

"'I should kill him,' I said.

"The doctor started to his feet (with the fly still in his hand), and
looked at me--a little too theatrically--with an expression of the
utmost horror.

"'Kill him!' repeated the doctor, in a paroxysm of virtuous alarm.
'Violence--murderous violence--in My Sanitarium! You take my breath
away!'

"I caught his eye while he was expressing himself in this elaborately
indignant manner, scrutinizing me with a searching curiosity which was,
to say the least of it, a little at variance with the vehemence of his
language and the warmth of his tone. He laughed uneasily when our eyes
met, and recovered his smoothly confidential manner in the instan