‘Can I leave Armine to-day, if I am bled?’ enquired Ferdinand, eagerly, ‘for go I must!’
‘I would not move to-day,’ said the physician.
‘I must, indeed I must. Mr. Glastonbury will tell you I must.’
‘If you set off early to-morrow you will get over as much ground in four-and-twenty hours as if you went this evening,’ said the physician, fixing the bandage on the arm as he spoke, and nodding to Mr. Glastonbury to prepare the basin.
‘To-morrow morning?’ said Ferdinand.
‘Yes, to-morrow,’ said the physician, opening his lancet.
‘Are you sure that I shall be able to set off tomorrow?’ said Ferdinand.
‘Quite,’ said the physician, opening the vein.
The dark blood flowed sullenly; the physician exchanged an anxious glance with Glastonbury; at length the arm was bandaged up, a composing draught, with which the physician had been prepared, given to his patient, and the doctor and Glastonbury withdrew. The former now left Armine for three hours, and Glastonbury prepared himself for his painful office of communicating to the parents the imminent danger of their only child.
Never had a more difficult task devolved upon an individual than that which now fell to the lot of the good Glastonbury, in conducting the affairs of a family labouring under such remarkable misconceptions as to the position and views of its various members. It immediately occurred to him, that it was highly probable that Miss Grandison, at such a crisis, would choose to accompany the parents of her intended husband. What incident, under the present circumstances, could be more awkward and more painful? Yet how to prevent its occurrence? How crude to communicate the real state of such affairs at any time by letter! How impossible at the moment he was preparing the parents for the alarming, perhaps fatal illness of their child, to enter on such subjects at all, much more when the very revelation, at a moment which required all their energy and promptitude, would only be occasioning at Bath scenes scarcely less distracting and disastrous than those occurring at Armine. It was clearly impossible to enter into any details at present; and yet Glastonbury, while he penned the sorrowful lines, and softened the sad communication with his sympathy, added a somewhat sly postscript, wherein he impressed upon Lady Armine the advisability, for various reasons, that she should only be accompanied by her husband.