"Thank you--I feel obliged--my heart indeed--to a bastard. Take back your ring if you please; kindly restore me mine. May I trouble you for room enough to go by?" And I swept out of the room, and through the side-door into my bed-room, where I crouched in a corner, with both hands on my heart, and the whole world gone away. "Mad!" I heard him cry, "yes, I must go mad at last!" Away he rushed from the house, and I fell upon the bed, and lay in fits till midnight. CHAPTER V. I believe that my heart would have burst, if they had not cut my stays; and how I wished it had. When I came back to my unlucky self, there was something shivery cold in the forehead wave of my hair. Was it Conrad’s finger? I put up my hand to dash it away, and caught a fine fat leech. Dr. Franks was sitting by me, holding a basin and a sponge. "That’s the last of them, my dear child. Don’t disturb him. He is doing his duty by you." "His duty! Was it his duty to say such fearful things? To break my heart with every word! Ashamed of me--ashamed of my darling father! Low and licentious! What have I done? what have I done? Oh, it I only knew what harm I have ever done!" "No harm, my poor dear, no harm in the world; let me bathe your pretty face. Come now, you shan’t cry another drop. What is to become of the beautiful eyes I was so proud of saving?" "Oh, I wish you hadn’t, how I wish you hadn’t. Dr. Franks, I have no father, and no mother, and no one in all the world to love me, and I was just getting so nice and happy again, so proud of myself, and so much prouder of him, and I began to think how glad my own dear father would be; and, Dr. Franks, I did love him so, with all my heart, perhaps it’s not very large, but with every morsel and atom of my heart--and now, now I must hate him as much as ever I can. Oh let me go home, do let me go home, where my father and mother are buried." And I rose in the bed to start, and the candles glimmered in my eyes. "Please to go out of the room, every one please to go; and don’t let Isola come. I can’t bear the sight of her now. It won’t take me long to dress, and I don’t want any luggage; and, Mrs. Shelfer, please to go for a cab: and I shan’t want the rooms any more, and it does not matter a bit about any letters. I’ll tell my father everything when I see him, and then perhaps he’ll tell me what harm it is I have done. Why don’t you go, when you see I want to get up?’ "Don’t you see, my dear child, we are going? Only you must take this glass of wine first, to prepare you for your long journey. Will you take it now, while we fetch the cab?" "Yes, anything, anything: I don’t care what it is. Only let me get ready." And I drank, without even tasting it, a glass of some dark liquid, which saved me from wandering further either in mind or body.