up caring for earthly consequences. Then, he wished that he had begged
Lydgate to come again that evening. Perhaps he might deliver a
different opinion, and think that Raffles was getting into a less
hopeful state. Should he send for Lydgate? If Raffles were really
getting worse, and slowly dying, Bulstrode felt that he could go to bed
and sleep in gratitude to Providence. But was he worse? Lydgate might
come and simply say that he was going on as he expected, and predict
that he would by-and-by fall into a good sleep, and get well. What was
the use of sending for him? Bulstrode shrank from that result. No
ideas or opinions could hinder him from seeing the one probability to
be, that Raffles recovered would be just the same man as before, with
his strength as a tormentor renewed, obliging him to drag away his wife
to spend her years apart from her friends and native place, carrying an
alienating suspicion against him in her heart.

He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the firelight only,
when a sudden thought made him rise and light the bed-candle, which he
had brought down with him. The thought was, that he had not told Mrs.
Abel when the doses of opium must cease.

He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motionless for a long while.
She might already have given him more than Lydgate had prescribed. But
it was excusable in him, that he should forget part of an order, in his
present wearied condition. He walked up-stairs, candle in hand, not
knowing whether he should straightway enter his own room and go to bed,
or turn to the patient's room and rectify his omission. He paused in
the passage, with his face turned towards Raffles's room, and he could
hear him moaning and murmuring. He was not asleep, then. Who could
know that Lydgate's prescription would not be better disobeyed than
followed, since there was still no sleep?

He turned into his own room. Before he had quite undressed, Mrs. Abel
rapped at the door; he opened it an inch, so that he could hear her
speak low.

"If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor nothing to give the
poor creetur? He feels sinking away, and nothing else will he
swaller--and but little strength in it, if he did--only the opium. And
he says more and more he's sinking down through the earth."

To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode did not answer. A struggle was going on
within him.

"I think he must die for want o' support, if he goes on in that way.