The next moment Oliver was briskly administering to Fan, as most people in his position, at their wits’ end what to do for the best, would have administered it, a cold douche—first on the suppliant, whom he would fain have taken into his arms and sheltered from every farther blast of the stormy wind which had cast her down bleeding and powerless, to implore mercy for another and not herself—and next on her agonised petition. ‘Nonsense, Fan, you are over-wrought, my dear; your nerves are unstrung; you do not know what you are saying.’ But the time for pulling herself together, struggling to her feet, and staggering on with the veil drawn decently down again over her torture and her faintness, was over for Fan. ‘I do know what I am saying, Oliver,’ she insisted with ashy lips, while the hand which clutched his arm was trembling like a leaf. ‘You think a wife should not drop the slightest hint of the skeleton in her closet. I will agree with you here. And I have not breathed a word to any other human being—not to Horry, who is his second self—only to you; and do you suppose I could have spoken to you unless in the last extremity, which has come?’ ‘Then rest satisfied with what you have done, Fan; say no more about it,’ Oliver conjured her, as if he would have put his hand upon her mouth to keep her from further utterance, or brought down the creeping dusk to hide their faces from each other. He got up, took several turns up and down the room, so that he might have his back to her when he promised solemnly; ‘The devil shall not have Harry, so far as I can help it.’ That Fan should have come to her brother with such a prayer on her lips, was only less bad for him than for Fan herself.