"Let me lean on you," said Griffith. And the strong wrestler went tottering up the stairs. There they showed him poor Kate, white as the bed-clothes, breathing hard, and with a pulse that hardly moved. 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, Corrie, 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 blacksmith'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. 'T is a present from thee." She only 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."