If Harry had suddenly dealt Ogledon a heavy blow, he could not have staggered or surprised him more. Recovering instantly, however, he came at the other with a rush, and caught him by the throat; his dark face almost livid with passion.
“You hound!” he said, in a sort of hoarse whisper—“this is a trick—a lying tale, hatched up amongst you here. Do you want to drive me mad?” Then, seeing the look of blank amazement and growing wrath in the other’s eyes, his mood changed swiftly, and he dropped his hands, and passed one over his forehead, in the same nervous fashion as before. “I—I beg your pardon, Harry; I had no right to speak to you in such a way. But I—I have been ill—and am faint—faint and weak, from a long journey, and but little food. Take—take a glass of wine, Harry—and then answer me clearly.”
He turned to the table, and poured out wine with a shaking hand; carried it—spilling a little as he did so—to the lad. But Harry shook his head, and seemed to put away the glass with his hand. He was suspicious of every one and everything at that time.
“I can answer you quite clearly, sir,” he said, brusquely.
“Mr. Chater went with me to London—not with me, but on the same day; we met in London—a week ago. I have not seen him since. Have you?” He seemed to listen for the answer of the other, as though his life hung upon it.
“Yes, sir. Master Dandy came down the next day, quite unexpectedly; went to church——”
Ogledon signed to him with his hand to go away. “That will do,” he said. “You can go to bed.”
When he was left alone in the room with the sleeping Cripps, he went almost mechanically, as it seemed, to the table, and unsteadily poured out some brandy, and drank it. Then, with an awful eager hurry upon him, he ran round the table, and caught Cripps by the shoulders, and dragged him to his feet.
“Wake up, you drunken fool—wake up!” he cried, in a voice but little greater than a whisper. “I shall go mad, if I stop here alone, with this thing weighing upon me. Come—open your eyes; listen to what I have to say!”
Dr. Cripps, striving hard to go to sleep again, even while held upright by his friend, tried a line or two of his former lugubrious ditty, and smiled feebly. Ogledon, all impatience however, brought him rapidly to something of sobriety, by unceremoniously emptying the remains of a glass of spirits over him; whereupon he shuddered, and shivered, and opened his eyes fully; and stood upright without assistance.