“Away, woman!” he cried, suddenly turning all his efforts against her, in the endeavour to free his hands and strike her down. But she held him tightly. Curses upon her, whispered almost as from the inmost soul, but deadly and pregnant with hellish meaning, hissed through the doctor's teeth, which showed between his lips clenched like a workman's vice. Fanny prayed mentally for strength to hold him. As they struggled, the sick man beneath them spoke. “Fanny--your father------” Rowel threw the whole weight of his body upon him to stop that tongue. He could not. “Your father is in Rowel's--” “It's a lie!--a lie!--a lie!” cried the doctor in rapid succession, to render the words inaudible. Their struggle grew more desperate, and Fanny could not hold much longer: the unwonted muscles would not obey her will to gripe. They were overstrained, and growing useless. At the same time the doctor wrenched more furiously than ever. The dying man beneath him gurgled in the throat for breath, and tossed in muscular convulsions beneath the clothes. At last he got himself to the edge of the bed, and by a sudden and last violent effort, struck himself against the doctor so forcibly as to loosen him from the hands of Fanny, and throw him several paces from the bed. The lawyer threw himself upright, and with his dim half-dead eyes fixed on Fanny, and his finger turning to point at Rowel, he cried with his last breath, “In his madhouse!--his madhouse!” and sunk back to groan and die. Fanny stood a moment, and then fell, like a stone, insensible to the ground. [Illustration: 061] Presently the clerk and the maid-servant, were in the room. Doctor Rowel had just folded up the bed-clothes. “Take that girl up,” said he calmly; “she has fainted at this sight of death. Your master is gone, young man. I did not think, at first, he would see the night over. Give her some cold water; sprinkle her temples, and carry her to bed, and then send for somebody to lay this corpse out. Before morning it will be cold.” As the doctor said this he gathered up such of the powders as had not been administered, and put them in his pocket. At the same time Fanny was carried away, according to his directions, and placed on the bed in her own room. Thither Doctor Rowel followed, and employed himself in restoring her. When Fanny first opened her eyes and saw him bending over her, she shrieked and sunk again. Again she was recovered. “Do leave me,” said she. “Do go away, or I shall die.” “But I have something to say to you, my dear,” observed the doctor, with an assumed sweetness of tone. “Now, quiet yourself, and endeavour to get over this agitation. You will never be better till you get calmer.” “Then pray leave me,” again replied Fanny, “and I may then be quiet. Is master any better?” “Yes--yes,” the doctor answered; “but never mind him. You should not have interfered with _me_, Fanny. He was delirious,--outrageous. I was obliged to hold him down.”