nd it so happens I have just the wine to suit him. Conway, come
back with me, and I 'll give you a half-dozen of it."

"And is there nothing--is there no--" Bella could utter no more, when a
warning of the doctor's hand showed that her father's eyes were on her.

"Come here, Bella," said he, in a low tone,--"come here to me. There's
a pound in my waistcoat-pocket, in my room; put a shilling inside of it,
for it's a guinea he ought to have, and gold, by rights, if we had it.
And tell him we 'll send for him if we want to see him again. Do it
delicately, darling, so as not to let him know. Say I 'm used to these
attacks; say they're in the family; say--But there, they are driving
away,--they're off! and he never waited for his fee! That's the
strangest thing of all." And so he fell a-thinking over this curious
fact, muttering from time to time to himself, "I never heard of the like
before."

CHAPTER XXIV. THE COTTAGE

Davenport Dunn had but little leisure to think about Conway or poor
Kellett. A change of Ministry had just occurred in England, and men's
minds were all eagerly speculating who was "to come in." Crowds of
country gentlemen flocked up to Dublin, and "rising men" of all shades
of opinion anxiously paraded their own claims to notice. Dunn's house
was besieged from morning to night by visitors, all firmly persuaded
that he must know more of the coming event than any one. Whether such
was really the case, or that he deemed it good policy to maintain the
delusion, Dunn affected a slight indisposition, and refused to admit any
visitor. Mr. Clowes, indeed, informed the inquirers that it was a mere
passing ailment,--"a slight derangement in the bronchi," he said; but be
rigidly maintained the blockade, and suffered none to infringe it.

Of course, a hundred rumors gave their own version of this illness. It
was spleen; it was indignation; the Government had thrown him over: he
had been refused the secretaryship which he had formerly applied for.
Others averred that his attack was most serious,--an ossification or a
scirrhus of some cartilage, a thing always fatal and dreadfully painful.
Some went further. It was his prosperity was in peril. Over-speculation
had jeopardized him, and he was deep in the "Credit Mobilier." Now, all
this while, the disappointed politician, the hopeless invalid, and the
ruined speculator ate and drank well, received and wrote replies to
innumerable confidential notes from those in