"

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 the doctor here immediately. Let me bring him, sir."

A gleam as of a lantern through his oppressive mental fog calmed the
awful irritability of his nerves somewhat.

"You've got him outside?"

"No, sir."

The merchant's eagerness faded out. He put his hand to her shoulder, and
went along to a chair, sinking into it, and closing his eyelids. So they
remained, Emilia at his right hand. She watched him breathing with a
weak open mouth, and thought more of the doctor now than of Wilfrid.

CHAPTER XXV

Braintop's knock at the door had been unheeded for some minutes. At last
Emilia let him in. The brandy and biscuits were placed on a table, and
Emilia resumed her watch by Mr. Pole. She saw that his lips moved, after
a space, and putting her ear down, understood that he desired not to see
any one who might come for an interview with him: nor were the clerks
to be admitted. The latter direction was given in precise terms. Emilia
repeated the orders outside. On her return, the merchant's eyes were
open.

"My forehead feels damp," he said; "and I'm not hot at all. Just take
hold of my hands. They're like wet crumpets. I wonder what makes me so
stiff. A man mustn't sit at business too long at a time. Sure to make
people think he's ill. What was that about a doctor? I seem to remember.
I won't see one."

Emilia had filled a glass with brandy. She brought it nearer to his
hand, while he was speaking. At the touch of the glass, his fingers went
round it slowly, and he raised