e suspected me of some occult medical design on Miss Verinder! "Might
I presume to ask," he said, "what my young lady and the medicine-chest
have got to do with each other?"

"Stay in the sitting-room, and you will see."

Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to superintend me
effectually, on an occasion when a medicine-chest was included in the
proceedings.

"Is there any objection, sir" he asked, "to taking Mr. Bruff into this
part of the business?"

"Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to accompany me
down-stairs."

Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine-chest, without another word.
I went back into Mr. Blake's room, and knocked at the door
of communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his papers in his
hand--immersed in Law; impenetrable to Medicine.

"I am sorry to disturb you," I said. "But I am going to prepare the
laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be present, and to see
what I do."

"Yes?" said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riveted on his
papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to me. "Anything else?"

"I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me administer the
dose."

"Anything else?"

"One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of remaining in Mr.
Blake's room, and of waiting to see what happens."

"Oh, very good!" said Mr. Bruff. "My room, or Mr. Blake's room--it
doesn't matter which; I can go on with my papers anywhere. Unless you
object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing THAT amount of common sense into
the proceedings?"

Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the lawyer,
speaking from his bed.

"Do you really mean to say that you don't feel any interest in what we
are going to do?" he asked. "Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination
than a cow!"

"A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake," said the lawyer. With that
reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping his papers in his
hand.

We found Miss Verinder, pale and agitated, restlessly pacing her
sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood Betteredge,
on guard over the medicine-chest. Mr. Bruff sat down on the first chair
that he could find, and (emulating the usefulness of the cow) plunged
back again into his papers on the spot.

Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her one
all-absorbing interest--her interest in Mr. Blake.

"How is he now?" she asked. "Is he nervous? is he out of temper?