“I accepted his suggestion; and he ordered the tea. While it was coming, he walked up and down the room, and I sat by the fire, and not a word passed between us on either side.
“The tea revived me; and the doctor noticed a change for the better in my face. He sat down opposite to me at the table, and spoke out at last.
“‘If I had ten thousand pounds at this moment,’ he began, ‘I would give the whole of it never to have compromised myself in your desperate speculation on Mr. Armadale’s death!’
“He said those words with an abruptness, almost with a violence, which was strangely uncharacteristic of his ordinary manner. Was he frightened himself, or was he trying to frighten me? I determined to make him explain himself at the outset, so far as I was concerned. ‘Wait a moment, doctor,’ I said. ‘Do you hold me responsible for what has happened?’
“‘Certainly not,’ he replied, stiffly. ‘Neither you nor anybody could have foreseen what has happened. When I say I would give ten thousand pounds to be out of this business, I am blaming nobody but myself. And when I tell you next that I, for one, won’t allow Mr. Armadale’s resurrection from the sea to be the ruin of me without a fight for it, I tell you, my dear madam, one of the plainest truths I ever told to man or woman in the whole course of my life. Don’t suppose I am invidiously separating my interests from yours in the common danger that now threatens us both. I simply indicate the difference in the risk that we have respectively run. You have not sunk the whole of your resources in establishing a Sanitarium; and you have not made a false declaration before a magistrate, which is punishable as perjury by the law.’
“I interrupted him again. His selfishness did me more good than his tea: it roused my temper effectually. ‘Suppose we let your risk and my risk alone, and come to the point,’ I said. ‘What do you mean by making a fight for it? I see a railway guide on your table. Does making a fight for it mean—running away?’
“‘Running away?’ repeated the doctor. ‘You appear to forget that every farthing I have in the world is embarked in this establishment.’
“‘You stop here, then?’ I said.
“‘Unquestionably!’
“‘And what do you mean to do when Mr. Armadale comes to England?’