Mr. Charles Plackett walked up to the foot of the bed, and took a long steady gaze at the sick man.--"Good-morning, Mr. Denison," he said. "I suppose you know the object that has brought me here to-day?"
"Aye, I know, I know," said the Squire wearily, in a low voice that had lost something of its harsh strident tones, and had acquired instead the hollowness that comes with protracted illness. "And now that you have seen me, much good may the sight do you!" he added, with a touch of his old grim irony. "Not that I intend any discourtesy to you, sir, so much as to them that have sent you."
Mr. Plackett was not usually at a loss for words, but he evidently felt the awkwardness of his position this morning. He coughed softly behind his hand, and looked round at Dr. Jago, who responded by drawing up a couple of chairs and motioning the visitors into them.
"I had the pleasure of meeting you once or twice in London some years ago, Mr. Denison," spoke the lawyer, by way of a lame beginning.
"It may have been a pleasure to you, though I doubt it," retorted the Squire. "I can't say that it was much of a pleasure to me, knowing whom you represented. Come, now."
Mr. Plackett gave vent to a dry little chuckle. It was a way he had in business when anything particularly disagreeable had been said to him. "Well, well, it is perhaps the wisest plan to let bygones be bygones," he said, "though, if I remember rightly, you had the better of me at those interviews.--Your cousin, Mr. Denison, of Nunham Priors----"
"Titly-tutly, man alive!" broke in the Squire. "If you came here to talk to me about that viper--I say that viper, d'ye hear?--the sooner you pack yourself off the better.--You have seen me, and you have talked with me--what more do you want?"
The sick man, with his white face and gleaming eyes, looked so fierce, and his tone was one of such extreme exasperation, that Mr. Foxey involuntarily pushed back his chair in momentary alarm.
"Believe me, Squire, I had no intention of starting a topic that would be in the slightest degree offensive to you," said Mr. Plackett, in his most conciliatory tone.
The sick man turned away impatiently, and pointed to a cup on the table that contained beef-tea.--Jago stepped forward and put the cup into his fingers. He lifted it to his lips, tasted a little of the tea, and next moment dashed the cup and its contents violently into the grate. "Cold--cold!" he cried with savage energy. "You are all alike," staring at Jago. "You are all in a league to hurry me into the churchyard!" And with that he sank back exhausted on his pillows, and began to catch his breath in quick gasps.