"Of course we couldn't, Banks," the Squire would respond with a chuckle. "It's wonderful stuff that of yours. Send another pailful along as soon as you like."
Then would Banks take his departure, knowing well that not one drop of his medicine would be swallowed by the master of Stanbrook. But he had a large family, and could not afford to quarrel with his bread-and-cheese. He was no worse than the majority of his fellows, for circumstances make humbugs of most of us, if not in one way, then in another.
He had heard all that common report had to tell him about Dinkel, and about the magical drug he had brought with him from the East, but he forebore to make any inquiries of his own into the matter. To him the whole thing was an insoluble mystery; but, for all that, there was one consolatory feature connected with it. So long as Mr. Cortelyon could be kept alive, even were it with the connivance of the Foul Fiend himself, so long would he, James Banks, continue to draw a certain number of guineas for visits paid and physic supplied, although the one might be nothing more than a solemn farce, and the other might be poured down the kitchen sink.
To himself he stigmatized Cornelius Dinkel as a "Son of the Devil."
But what about the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant all this time?
After that last interview with the Squire, she had waited with exemplary patience for the news of his demise. He was a dear old man, and she had been grieved at finding him so near to death's door; but all these things are ordained by Providence for the best, and it would not only be useless but wicked to rebel against them. Of course, under the circumstances, she would have to go into mourning--that is to say, into a modified kind of mourning--for a short time. Society would expect it of her when the dead man's munificent bequest to her was made public. Well, she had the consolation of knowing that she never looked better than she did in mourning. Dear, dear Mr. Cortelyon!
Still, the expected news--one hardly likes to term it the longed-for news--failed to come. It was strange, it was very strange. After waiting a few more days with restrained impatience, she sent one of her servants direct to the Hall with a diplomatically worded message having reference to the state of Mr. Cortelyon's health. The answer he brought back was both surprising and disconcerting. An unexpected change had manifested itself; the Squire was very much better, and the improvement seemed likely to last.
"Oh, I am so glad, so very glad!" said Mrs. Bullivant to her messenger when he had unburdened himself of his news. "You have relieved me of a great anxiety."
"So the improvement seemed likely to last, did it?" she said to herself. But that was sheer nonsense. It had been her lot to see a good deal of sickness and death, and if she had ever seen a man whose hours were numbered, that man was Ambrose Cortelyon. The so-called improvement, as to the nature of which every one about him seemed to be laboring under a misapprehension, was but Nature's expiring effort. She had been a witness of such things before. For a few brief moments the lamp would flame up as brightly as ever it had done, and then would come sudden darkness.
It was with an easy mind that she set out next day for London, where some law business connected with her late father's affairs rendered her presence imperatively necessary. She was gone six weeks, during the whole of which time she looked, morning by morning, to receive a letter containing an announcement of the Squire's demise. But none came to hand. It was both unaccountable and disappointing. It would have been such an advantage to her to be able to buy her mourning in town! She journeyed back home in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. It was no longer "dear, noble-hearted Mr. Cortelyon," with her; he was now a "nasty tiresome old man, who ought to be ashamed of himself to be so long a-dying."