The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing of
Richard's seizure.

"What an iron man you can be," she exclaimed, smothering her intuitions.
She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at least, if he
would only get well and be the bright flower of promise he once was.

"Can you look on him," she pleaded, "can you look on him and persevere?"

It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply. The youth
lay in his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on his
cheeks, and altered eyes.

Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-
shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments,
guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The old doctor
did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his
prescriptions like a piano to the musician. "But," he said at a family
consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young
man, "drugs are not much in cases of this sort. Change! That's what's
wanted, and as soon as may be. Distraction! He ought to see the world,
and know what he is made of. It's no use my talking, I know," added the
doctor.

"On the contrary," said Sir Austin, "I am quite of your persuasion. And
the world he shall see--now."

"We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor," Adrian remarked.