There were a few moments of busy silence while he worked over the patient, then he looked up with a dark frown on his broad brow.
"Who is this man, and how came he here?" he inquired.
"He is my son-in-law, doctor, and he had barely entered the room when he fell in a fit," said Richard Leith. "What ails him?"
Another dire contortion of the prostrate form, and the busy physician answered, sternly:
"He has all the symptoms of arsenical poisoning."
The hovering night fell rainy, dark, and cheerless. The skillful physician worked steadily, anxiously, and patiently, trying to save from the grasp of the fell destroyer the writhing victim of Elinor Glenalvan's deadly hate and wicked revenge.
Everyone was filled with grief and sorrow. All warring passions, all human resentments were forgotten in the anxiety with which they watched the wavering balance in which Bertram Chesleigh lay fluctuating between life and death.
Arsenic had been administered to him in a draught of wine, declared the physician, and the wonder arose who had given it to him.