Griffith looked at her horror-struck. "Death has got hold of my darling," he screamed. "Snatch her away! for God's sake, snatch her from him!" The young doctor whipped off his coat, and bared his arm. "There," he cried, "Mr. Gaunt consents. Now, Come, be quick with the lancet, and hold this tube as I tell you; warm it first in that water." Here came an interruption. Griffith Gaunt griped the young doctor's arm, and with an agonized and ugly expression of countenance cried out, "What? _your_ blood! What right have you to lose blood for her?" "The right of a man who loves his art better than his blood," cried Ashley, with enthusiasm. Griffith tore off his coat and waistcoat, and bared his arm to the elbow. "Take every drop I have. No man's blood shall enter her veins but mine." And the creature seemed to swell to double his size, as with flushed cheek and sparkling eyes he held out a bare arm corded like a black-smith's, and white as a duchess's. The young doctor eyed the magnificent limb a moment with rapture: then fixed his apparatus and performed an operation which then, as now, was impossible in theory; only he did it. He sent some of Griffith Gaunt's bright red blood smoking hot into Kate Gaunt's veins. This done, he watched his patient closely, and administered stimulants from time to time. She hung between life and death for hours. But at noon next day she spoke, and seeing Griffith sitting beside her, pale with anxiety and loss of blood, she said, "My dear, do not thou fret. I died last night. I knew I should. But they gave me another life; and now I shall live to a hundred." They showed her the little boy; and, at sight of him, the whole woman made up her mind to live. And live she did. And, what is very remarkable, her convalescence was more rapid than on any former occasion. It was from a talkative nurse she first learned that Griffith had given his blood for her. She said nothing at the time, but lay with an angelic, happy smile, thinking of it. The first time she saw him after that, she laid her hand on his arm, and looking Heaven itself into his eyes, she said, "My life is very dear to me now. 'Tis a present from thee." She wanted a good excuse for loving him as frankly as before, and now he had given her one. She used to throw it in his teeth in the prettiest way. Whenever she confessed a fault, she was sure to turn slyly round and say, "but what could one expect of me? I have his blood in my veins." But once she told Father Francis, quite seriously, that she had never been quite the same woman since she lived by Griffith's blood; she was turned jealous; and moreover it had given him a fascinating power over her; and she could tell blindfold when he was in the room. Which last fact indeed she once proved by actual experiment. But all this I leave to such as study the occult sciences in this profound age of ours. Starting with this advantage, Time, the great curer, gradually healed a wound that looked incurable.