But Herries put her from him, almost roughly, with an oath.
'I can't bear it, Ally,' he said. 'If I must go, let me go now. I must have all or nothing.'
He took his riding-whip from the table where he had laid it, and turned and went without a word.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
That night did a stranger cause much commotion in the streets of C——by rampaging (as the inhabitants expressed it) up and down, demanding at every turn the surgeon who waited upon Mr. Graham of The Mains. It was Herries who pursued this curious quest, and the placid citizens judged him demented, as, indeed, but a few hours since, he would have judged himself. He traced the personage whom he sought to his own dwelling, where he found him, resting after the labours of the day, over a comfortable and steaming glass of toddy. Herries entered the room, booted and spurred as he was, and rang a guinea on the doctor's table with much the air of holding a pistol to his ear.
'I am given to understand,' said he, 'that you attend the laird of The Mains. Oblige me by telling me in confidence how long, in your opinion, it is probable that Mr. Graham has to live?' The astonished Æsculapius looked up, open-mouthed, shoving his spectacles from his nose to his bald forehead.
'God bless me!' he exclaimed. 'And who are you that put this most extraordinary question? It is outrageous!'
'I have paid good money for your opinion, like any other man—and should get it, I presume,' said Herries, sulkily.
'Not at all, not at all, sir!' said the doctor, swelling with professional offence. 'I never heard of such bold impudence!' He was, in the meantime, looking Herries up and down, and perceiving a gentlemanly man, well dressed and with a pale, grave face, made up his mind that he was neither a man in liquor nor a madman, but some person of consideration.
'If,' he said at last, 'you will give me satisfactory reasons for your extraordinary question, I may see whether I can answer it with decorum and with due attention to professional etiquette. I am too old a bird not to know that there are often good reasons for the strangest actions.' Herries was silent. He had intended no confidences; an impulse, very unlike him, had driven him to this crude method of trying to find out how long a time, Laban-like, he must yet serve for Alison. There was something kindly in the old doctor's weather-worn, sagacious countenance.