se interest it
is to keep me from his lordship. I warn you, sir, that if anything
happens in the meantime--'

The doctor rang the bell.

'I shall hold you responsible!' Mr. Fishwick cried passionately. 'I
consider this a most mysterious illness. I repeat, I--'

But apparently that was the last straw. 'Mysterious?' the doctor cried,
his face purple with indignation. 'Leave the room, sir! You are not
sane, sir! By God, you ought to be shut up, sir! You ought not to be
allowed to go about. Do you think that you are the only person who wants
to see His Majesty's Minister? Here is a courier come to-day from His
Grace the Duke of Grafton, and to-morrow there will be a score, and a
king's messenger from His Majesty among them--and all this trouble is
given by a miserable, little, paltry, petti--Begone, sir, before I say
too much!' he continued trembling with anger. And then to the servant,
'John, the door! the door! And see that this person does not trouble me
again. Be good enough to communicate in writing, sir, if you have
anything to say.'

With which poor Mr. Fishwick was hustled out, protesting but not
convinced. It is seldom the better side of human nature that lawyers
see; nor is an attorney's office, or a barrister's chamber, the soil in
which a luxuriant crop of confidence is grown. In common with many
persons of warm feelings, but narrow education, Mr. Fishwick was ready
to believe on the smallest evidence--or on no evidence at all--that the
rich and powerful were leagued against his client; that justice, if he
were not very sharp, would be denied him; that the heavy purse had a
knack of outweighing the righteous cause, even in England and in the
eighteenth century. And the fact that all his hopes were staked on this
case, that all his resources were embarked in it, that it had fallen, as
it were, from heaven into his hands--wherefore the greater the pity if
things went amiss--rendered him peculiarly captious and impracticable.
After this every day, nay, every hour, that passed without bringing him
to Lord Chatham's presence augmented his suspense and doubled his
anxiety. To be put off, not one day, but two days, three days--what
might not happen in three days!--was a thing intolerable, insufferable;
a thing to bring the heavens down in pity on his head! What wonder if he
rebelled hourly; and being routed, as we have seen him routed, muttered
dark hints in Julia's ear, and, snubbed in that quarter also, had no
r