A pause of some minutes ensued: the Marquis could not trust himself to speak. Silence was for a time the only safeguard against a relapse into those wildly-expressed doubts, adjurations, and frantic wanderings which had ere now denoted the real condition of his mind.
"It is then decided—and I must prepare for death!" he at length said, in a low and measured tone. "With a candour equal to that which you have already shown, doctor, tell me how long I may hope yet to live?"
"Do not press me, my lord, on that head——"
"Nay: now you are yourself adopting the very means to excite me," interrupted the Marquis, angrily. "I am nerved to hear the worst: but I wish that the worst may be communicated to me. Speak, doctor—speak fearlessly—and say how long I may expect yet to live?"
The two physicians consulted each other with a rapid interchange of glances; and both thereby intimating an affirmative, the elder one said, "Your lordship might probably survive four-and-twenty hours."
"Four-and-twenty hours!" repeated the Marquis, the bed actually shaking with the cold shudder that passed through his frame at this appalling announcement: "four-and-twenty hours!" he said a second time: "that is a very short reprieve, indeed! Has your skill no means, doctor, of prolonging my existence for a few days—for a few hours, even, longer than the amount which you have named?"
"There is no hope of accomplishing such a result, my lord," was the reply.
"No hope!" murmured the Marquis: then after another short pause, he said in a tone which it cost him a dreadful effort to render firm, "Have the kindness to direct that my solicitor may be sent for without delay."
This desire was immediately complied with; and as the lawyer lived in the neighbourhood, scarcely half an hour elapsed ere he was ushered into the presence of the Marquis.
The physicians were desired to remain in the room; and the solicitor, seating himself by the nobleman's directions at the table near the bed, prepared his writing materials.