of the child's toy, as he moved it
hither and thither on the bed.

The doctor was the first who broke the spell of stillness which had
fallen on all the persons present. He approached the patient, and
examined him anxiously. Mrs. Armadale rose from her knees; and, first
waiting for her husband's permission, carried the sheets of manuscript
which she had taken out of the desk to the table at which Mr. Neal was
waiting. Flushed and eager, more beautiful than ever in the vehement
agitation which still possessed her, she stooped over him as she put
the letter into his hands, and, seizing on the means to her end with a
woman's headlong self-abandonment to her own impulses, whispered to
him, "Read it out from the beginning. I must and will hear it!" Her
eyes flashed their burning light into his; her breath beat on his cheek.
Before he could answer, before he could think, she was back with her
husband. In an instant she had spoken, and in that instant her beauty
had bent the Scotchman to her will. Frowning in reluctant acknowledgment
of his own inability to resist her, he turned over the leaves of the
letter; looked at the blank place where the pen had dropped from the
writer's hand and had left a blot on the paper; turned back again to the
beginning, and said the words, in the wife's interest, which the wife
herself had put into his lips.

"Perhaps, sir, you may wish to make some corrections," he began, with
all his attention apparently fixed on the letter, and with every outward
appearance of letting his sour temper again get the better of him.
"Shall I read over to you what you have already written?"

Mrs. Armadale, sitting at the bed head on one side, and the doctor, with
his fingers on the patient's pulse, sitting on the other, waited with
widely different anxieties for the answer to Mr. Neal's question. Mr.
Armadale's eyes turned searchingly from his child to his wife.

"You _will_ hear it?" he said. Her breath came and went quickly; her
hand stole up and took his; she bowed her head in silence. Her husband
paused, taking secret counsel with his thoughts, and keeping his eyes
fixed on his wife. At last he decided, and gave the answer. "Read it,"
he said, "and stop when I tell you."

It was close on one o'clock, and the bell was ringing which summoned the
visitors to their early dinner at the inn. The quick beat of footsteps,
and the gathering hum of voices outside, penetrated gayly into the room,
as Mr. Neal spread