"I went into the study, and found him sitting close by the fire with his head down and his hands on his knees. On the table near him, beside Armadale's letter and my note, I saw, in the little circle of light thrown by the reading-lamp, an open railway guide. Was he meditating flight? It was impossible to tell from his face, when he looked up at me, what he was meditating, or how the shock had struck him when he first discovered that Armadale was a living man.
" 'Take a seat near the fire,' he said. 'It's very raw and cold to-day.'
"I took a chair in silence. In silence, on his side, the doctor sat rubbing his knees before the fire.
" 'Have you nothing to say to me?' I asked.
"He rose, and suddenly removed the shade from the reading-lamp, so that the light fell on my face.
" 'You are not looking well,' he said. 'What's the matter?'
" 'My head feels dull, and my eyes are heavy and hot,' I replied.
'The weather, I suppose.'
"It was strange how we both got further and further from the one vitally important subject which we had both come together to discuss!
" 'I think a cup of tea would do you good,' remarked the doctor.
"I accepted his suggestion; and he ordered the tea. While it was coming, he walked up and down the room, and I sat by the fire, and not a word passed between us on either side.
"The tea revived me; and the doctor noticed a change for the better in my face. He sat down opposite to me at the table, and spoke out at last.
" 'If I had ten thousand pounds at this moment,' he began, 'Iwould give the whole of it never to have compromised myself in your desperate speculation on Mr. Armadale's death!'
"He said those words with an abruptness, almost with a violence, which was strangely uncharacteristic of his ordinary manner. Was he frightened himself, or was he trying to frighten me? Idetermined to make him explain himself at the outset, so far as Iwas concerned. 'Wait a moment, doctor,' I said. 'Do you hold me responsible for what has happened?'
" 'Certainly not,' he replied, stiffly. 'Neither you nor anybody could have foreseen what has happened. When I say I would give ten thousand pounds to be out of this business, I am blaming nobody but myself. And when I tell you next that I, for one, won't allow Mr. Armadale's resurrection from the sea to be the ruin of me without a fight for it, I tell you, my dear madam, one of the plainest truths I ever told to man or woman in the whole course of my life. Don't suppose I am invidiously separating my interests from yours in the common danger that now threatens us both. I simply indicate the difference in the risk that we have respectively run. _You_ have not sunk the whole of your resources in establishing a Sanitarium; and _you_ have not made a false declaration before a magistrate, which is punishable as perjury by the law.'
"I interrupted him again. His selfishness did me more good than his tea: it roused my temper effectually. 'Suppose we let your risk and my risk alone, and come to the point,' I said. 'What do you mean by making a fight for it? I see a railway guide on your table. Does making a fight for it mean--running away?'
" 'Running away?' repeated the doctor. 'You appear to forget that every farthing I have in the world is embarked in this establishment.'
" 'You stop here, then?' I said.
" 'Unquestionably!'
" 'And what do you mean to do when Mr. Armadale comes to England?'
"A solitary fly, the last of his race whom the winter had spared, was buzzing feebly about the doctor's face. He caught it before he answered me, and held it out across the table in his closed hand.
" 'If this fly's name was Armadale,' he said, 'and if you had got him as I have got him now, what would _you_ do?'
"His eyes, fixed on my face up to this time, turned significantly, as he ended this question, to my widow's dress. I, too, looked at it when he looked. A thrill of the old deadly hatred and the old deadly determination ran through me again.
" 'I should kill him,' I said.
"The doctor started to his feet (with the fly still in his hand), and looked at me--a little too theatrically--with an expression of the utmost horror.
" 'Kill him!' repeated the doctor, in a paroxysm of virtuous alarm. 'Violence--murderous violence--in My Sanitarium! You take my breath away!'
"I caught his eye while he was expressing himself in this elaborately indignant manner, scrutinizing me with a searching curiosity which was, to say the least of it, a little at variance with the vehemence of his language and the warmth of his tone. He laughed uneasily when our eyes met, and recovered his smoothly confidential manner in the instant that elapsed before he spoke again.
" 'I beg a thousand pardons,' he said. 'I ought to have known better than to take a lady too literally at her word. Permit me to remind you, however, that the circumstances are too serious for anything in the nature of--let us say, an exaggeration or a joke. You shall hear what I propose, without further preface.' He paused, and resumed his figurative use of the fly imprisoned in his hand. 'Here is Mr. Armadale. I can let him out, or keep him in, just as I please--and he knows it. I say to him,' continued the doctor, facetiously addressing the fly, 'Give me proper security, Mr. Armadale, that no proceedings of any sort shall be taken against either this lady or myself, and I will let you out of the hollow of my hand. Refuse--and, be the risk what it may, Iwill keep you in." Can you doubt, my dear madam, what Mr.
Armadale's answer is, sooner or later, certain to be? Can you doubt,' said the doctor, suiting the action to the word, and letting the fly go, 'that it will end to the entire satisfaction of all parties, in this way?'
" 'I won't say at present,' I answered, 'whether I doubt or not.
Let me make sure that I understand you first. You propose, if Iam not mistaken, to shut the doors of this place on Mr. Armadale, and not to let him out again until he has agreed to the terms which it is our interest to impose on him? May I ask, in that case, how you mean to make him walk into the trap that you have set for him here?'