Dr. Gannet was the bearer of Miss Denham's excuses to Lord Romfrey for
the delay in begging him to enter the house: in the confusion of the
household his lordship's card had been laid on the table below, and she
was in the sick-room.

'Is my nephew a dead man?' said the earl.

The doctor weighed his reply. 'He lives. Whether he will, after the
exhaustion of this prolonged fit of raving, I don't dare to predict. In
the course of my experience I have never known anything like it. He
lives: there's the miracle, but he lives.'

'On brandy?'

'That would soon have sped him.'

'Ha. You have everything here that you want?'

'Everything.'

'He's in your hands, Gannet.'

The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for a
while.

Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing,
observing nothing.

The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of a