She could not well now refuse to recognize him as a friend. His knowledge of society was so slight, he had not the faintest idea two such alien barks as his and hers might come nigh together, and have for a few hours a common interest and then part, “like a dream on the wide deep.” He railed against society; but of its ideas, customs, habits of thought, modes of action, he was ignorant as a child.
Already he had sketched out a course of action for Grace and himself—arranged the pecuniary part she was to play in the drama, and the various modes in which her money would enable him better to enact the character he had elected to fill.
His interest, professionally, in Mr. Moffat had departed. He could do nothing for him—no one could do anything for him. He had even in the course of his limited experience beheld nature achieve triumphs of medical skill, which set science and all previous calculations utterly at nought, but his conviction was, that in this case nature meant to let matters take their course.
“She has been meddled with and thwarted,” he considered; “but for Doctor Girvan perhaps she might have had a chance, at all events we should have been left time in which to try our treatment. As matters are he is doomed. A few hours more and the master of Bayview will be wiser than the wisest man on earth. He will know more than any of us.”
Which really might be considered an almost reluctant admission on the part of Mr. Hanlon’s mind, not because his theology was defective, but because his self-conceit was so great, it actually touched his vanity to think a man like Mr. Moffat would know more in the next world than he knew in this.
“I have done all I could in the matter, that is certain,” he said as a finish to his reflections; and Grace being in the sick room, he went downstairs to join Drs. Murney and Connelley at breakfast.
Let death be ever so active in one place, life will be equally active in another, and the fact that the master of the house could never again welcome a guest nor issue a command did not in the smallest degree affect the appetites of the men who had come so far to strive and save him.
Doctor Girvan, indeed, saying it would choke him to “take bite or sup,” had hurried home to secure a few hours’ quiet before the business of the day began; but the night air and the long drive and ride, and the sharp morning air which blew crisp and cold over Bayview, sharpened the relish with which the two strange doctors looked on the well-laden table that gladdened their eyes when they entered the dining-room after their interview with Grace.
As for Mr. Hanlon, he was young; he dined early; he never supped; he did not often treat himself to the luxury of sitting up all night—in a word, breakfast was still breakfast to him, let who could not help it die, let who would live.
“A most capital cut of beef!” remarked Dr. Murney, returning from the sideboard with his plate replenished for the third time; “Connelley, let me persuade you.”