"My dear Kilrush, you overpower me," murmured the bishop; and then he bent over the invalid, and whispered a solemn inquiry.
"No, no; I am not in a fit state of mind," Kilrush answered fretfully. "And my wife is not a believer."
"Not a believer!"
His lordship's eyebrows were elevated in unspeakable horror. He glanced with something of aversion at the lovely face hanging over the dying man with looks of all absorbing love. Not a believer! He would scarcely have been more horrified had she been a disciple of Wesley or Whitefield.
"My dear friend," he murmured, "'tis my bounden duty to urge——"
"Come to me to-morrow morning, bishop."
"Let it be so, then. At eight o'clock to-morrow morning."
"A rivederci," said Kilrush, with a mocking smile, waving an attenuated hand, as the churchman and his satellite withdrew.
Thornton and the lawyer followed, but only to the ante-room. The apothecary and valet remained. The physician had paid his last visit before Antonia arrived. There had been a consultation of three great men in the afternoon, and it had been decided that nothing more could be done for the patient than to make him as comfortable as his malady would permit, and for that the apothecary's art was sufficient.
"You can wait in the next room, Davis, within call," said Kilrush, as the grave elderly man, in a queer little chestnut wig, bent over him, looking anxiously in his face, and feeling his pulse.