Robert, so adjured, began to talk, but with difficulty. The words would not flow, and it was almost a relief when in the middle that strange creeping sleep overtook the squire again.
Meyrick, who was staying in the house, and who had been coming in and out through the evening, eyeing Elsmere, now that there was more light on the scene, with almost as much anxiety and misgiving as the squire, was summoned. The squire was put into his carrying-chair. Vincent and a male attendant appeared, and he was borne to his room, Meyrick peremptorily refusing to allow Robert to lend so much as a finger to the performance. They took him up the library stairs, through the empty book-rooms and that dreary room which had been his father's, and so into his own. By the time they set him down he was quite awake and conscious again.
'It can't be said that I follow my own precepts,' he said to Robert grimly as they put him down. 'Not much of the open eye about this. I shall sleep myself into the unknown as sweetly as any saint in the calendar.'
Robert was going when the squire called him back.
'You'll stay to-morrow, Elsmere?'
'Of course, if you wish it.'
The wrinkled eyes fixed him intently.
'Why did you ever go?'
'As I told you before, Squire, because there was nothing else for an honest man to do.'