The visitor began to think his host mad or drunk, and arose smartly to his feet for the second time. Again Merle stopped him.
"No, no! Don't go yet. I am subject to these--these attacks." Then, with a sudden burst of hospitality, "Won't you have a glass of wine?"
Dan's eyes wandered towards the writing-table, on which stood a decanter apparently containing wine.
"Not that--not that," muttered Merle, hastily putting it in a cupboard; "that is medicine for my attacks."
He averted his face from Dan, but the young man had already guessed his secret. Shaking hand, glazed eye, retiring manner,--the inference to be drawn from these was only too plain. Dr. Merle was a laudanum-drinker, and the decanter so hurriedly removed contained the fatal drug.
"No, thank you, doctor; I will not take any wine," he said, disgusted with this discovery. "I must be off at once. Give my respects and the necklace to Miss Merle."
"You'll come again?"
"Certainly, in a day or so. Goodbye for the present."
With a sigh of relief, he found himself again in the open air, and looked back at the dismal house with a shudder.
"Poor girl!" he sighed, thinking of Meg; "what can she do with a father like that? A laudanum-drinker--a dreamer of dreams--a nervous fool. How, in the name of Nature, did he ever come to have that splendid creature as his child? I don't wonder she wanders about the hills. Anything would be better than that dark room and its unwholesome occupant."