A savage instinct seemed to drive Leigh, on hearing this, to bound at Garstang, seize him by the throat and strangle him; but a glance at Kate checked it, and the physician regained the ascendancy. He poured a little of the tea into a clean cup, smelt, tasted, and spat it out. "Quite right," he said firmly. "Don't let that tea-pot be touched again." Garstang winced, for the words were to him charged with death, a trial for murder, and the silent evidence of the crime. "Here, you help me," said Leigh, quickly; and he rinsed out the cup with water from the urn, poured a couple of teaspoonfuls from a bottle into the cup, and kneeling by the couch while the housekeeper held the insensible girl's head, tried to insert the spoon between the closely set teeth. The effort was vain, and he was forced to trickle the antidote he tried to administer through the teeth, but there was no effort made to swallow; the insensibility was too deep. "Better?" said Garstang, after watching the doctor's efforts to revive his patient for quite half an hour. "Better?" he said, fiercely. "Can you not see, man, that she is steadily passing away?" "No, no, she seems calmer, and more like one asleep. Oh, persevere, doctor!" "I want help here--the counsel and advice of the best man you can get. Send instantly for Sir Edward Lacey, Harley Street." "No," said Garstang, frowning darkly. "You seem an able practitioner. It is a matter of time for the effects of the potent drug to die out, is it not?" "Yes, of course; but I fear the worst." "Go on with what you are doing, doctor; I have faith in you." At that moment Leigh felt that nothing more could be done--that nature was the great physician; and he once more knelt down by the side of the couch for a time, while a terrible silence seemed to have fallen on the place, even the housekeeper looking now as if she were turned to stone, and dared not move her lips as she intently watched the calm white face upon the pillow. "I can do no more," said Leigh at last, in a hoarse whisper. "God help me! How weak and helpless one feels at a time like this!" The words came involuntarily from his lips, for at that moment he seemed to be alone with the sufferer, his patient once again, whose life he would have given his own to save. "Oh, come, come, doctor!" said Garstang, breaking in harshly upon the terrible stillness, and there was a forced gaiety in his tone. "It was a little sleeping draught; surely the effects will soon pass off. You are taking too serious a view of the case." "I take the view of it, sir," said Leigh, gravely, as he bent lower over the marble face before him, fighting hard to control the wild desire to press his lips to the temple where an artery throbbed, "I take the view given to us by experience. You had better send for further help at once."