“Can't do it, sir; my skill doesn't extend that far. There is no plague-spot or visible wound or bruise on the person; so he must have died of some internal complaint—probably disease of the heart.”
“Never knew him to have such a thing,” said Sir Norman, sighing. “It is very mysterious and very dreadful, and notwithstanding all you have said, I cannot believe him dead. Can he not remain here until morning, at least?”
The starved apothecary looked at him out of a pair of hollow, melancholy eyes.
“Gold can do anything,” was his plaintive reply.
“I understand. You shall have it. Are you sure you can do nothing more for him?”
“Nothing whatever, sir; and excuse me, but there are customers in the shop, and I must leave, sir.”
Which he did, accordingly; and Sir Norman was left alone with all that remained of him who, two hours before, was his warm friend. He could scarcely believe that it was the calm majesty of death that so changed the expression of that white face, and yet, the longer he looked, the more deeply an inward conviction assured him that it was so. He chafed the chilling hands and face, he applied hartshorn and burnt feathers to the nostrils, but all these applications, though excellent in their way, could not exactly raise the dead to life, and, in this case, proved a signal failure. He gave up his doctoring, at last, in despair, and folding his arms, looked down at what lay on the table, and tried to convince himself that it was Ormiston. So absorbed was he in the endeavor, that he heeded not the passing moments, until it struck him with a shock that Hubert might even now be waiting for him at the trysting-place, with news of Leoline. Love is stronger than friendship, stronger than grief, stronger than death, stronger than every other feeling in the world; so he suddenly seized his hat, turned his back on Ormiston and the apothecary's shop, and strode off to the place he had quitted.
No Hubert was there, but two figures were passing slowly along in the moonlight, and one of them he recognized, with an impulse to spring at him like a tiger and strangle him. But he had been so shocked and subdued by his recent discovery, that the impulse which, half an hour before, would have been unhesitatingly obeyed, went for nothing, now; and there was more of reproach, even, than anger in his voice, as he went over and laid his hand on the shoulder of one of them.
“Stay!” he said. “One word with you, Count L'Estrange. What have you done with Leoline!”
“Ah! Sir Norman, as I live!” cried the count wheeling round and lifting his hat. “Give me good even—or rather, good morning—Kingsley, for St. Paul's has long gone the midnight hour.”