No time was now to be lost. At any moment the enemy might be upon him. He must go quickly, but where? A brief struggle against an almost unconquerable reluctance and dread, and then, rising from the table, Mr. Ridley caught up his hat and ran down stairs, Ethel calling after him. He did not heed her anxious cries. It was for her sake that he was going. She heard the street door shut with a jar, and listened to her father's departing feet until the sound died out in the distance.
It was over an hour from this time when Mr. Ridley, forcing his way past the servant who had tried to keep him back, stood confronting Mr. Elliott. A look of disappointment, followed by an angry cloud, came into his face. But seeing Mrs. Birtwell, his countenance brightened; and stepping past the clergyman, he advanced toward her. She did not retreat from him, but held out her hand, and said, with an earnestness so genuine that it touched his feeling:
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Ridley."
As he took her extended hand Mrs. Birtwell drew him toward a sofa and sat down near him, manifesting the liveliest interest.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked.
"No, ma'am," he replied, in a mournful voice—"not for me. I didn't come for that. But you'll be good to my poor Ethel, won't you, and—and—"
His voice broke into sobs, his weak frame quivered.
"I will, I will!" returned Mrs. Birtwell with prompt assurance.
"Oh, thank you. It's so good of you. My poor girl! I may never see you again."
The start and glance of fear he now threw across the room revealed to Mr. Elliott the true condition of their visitor, and greatly alarmed him. He had never been a witness of the horrors of delirium tremens, and only knew of it by the frightful descriptions he had sometimes read, but he could not mistake the symptoms of the coming attack as now seen in Mr. Ridley, who, on getting from Mrs. Birtwell a repeated and stronger promise to care for Ethel, rose from the sofa and started for the door.