This time Dr. Westbrook's manner seemed graver and more perplexed than on the former visit. He asked even more questions, and at last, after a thoughtful examination of the patient, he said, very seriously--

"Mr. Dale, I must tell you frankly that I do not like your symptoms."

"You consider them alarming?"

"I consider them perplexing, rather than alarming. And as you are not a nervous subject I think I may venture to trust you fully."

"You may trust in the strength of my nerve, if that is what you mean."

"I believe I may, and I shall have to test your moral courage and general force of character."

"Pray be brief, then," said Douglas with a faint smile. "I can almost guess what you have to say. You are going to tell me that I carry the seeds of a mortal disease; that the shadowy hand of death already holds me in its fatal grip."

"I am going to tell you nothing of the kind," answered Dr. Westbrook.

"I can find no symptoms of disease. You have a very fair lease of life, Mr. Dale, and may enjoy a green old age, if other people would allow you to enjoy it."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that if I can trust my own judgment in a matter which is sometimes almost beyond the reach of science, the symptoms from which you suffer are those of slow poisoning."

"Slow poisoning!" replied Douglas, in almost inaudible accents. "It is impossible!" he exclaimed, after a pause, during which the physician waited quietly until his patient should have in some manner recovered his calmness of mind. "It is quite impossible. I have every confidence in your skill, your science; but in this instance, Dr. Westbrook, I feel assured that you are mistaken."

"I would gladly think so, Mr. Dale," replied the doctor, gravely; "but I cannot. I have given my best thought to your case. I can only form one conclusion--namely, that you are labouring under the effects of poison."

"Do you know what the poison is?"

"I do not; but I do know that it must have been administered with a caution that is almost diabolical in its ingenuity--so slowly, by such imperceptible degrees, that you have scarcely been aware of the change which it has worked in your system. It was a most providential circumstance that you came to me when you did, as I have been able to discover the treachery to which you are subject while there is yet ample time for you to act against it. Forewarned is forearmed, you know, Mr. Dale. The hidden hand of the secret poisoner is about its fatal work; it is for you and me to discover to whom the hand belongs.

Is there any one about you whom you can suspect of such hideous guilt?"

"No one--no one. I repeat that such a thing is impossible."

"Who is the person most interested in your death?" asked Dr. Westbrook, calmly.

"My first cousin, Sir Reginald Eversleigh, who would succeed to a very handsome income in that event. But I have not met him, or, at any rate, broke bread with him, for the last two months. Nor can I for a moment believe him capable of such infamy."

"If you have not been in intimate association with him for the last two months, you may absolve him from all suspicion," answered Dr.

Westbrook. "You spoke to me the other day of dining very frequently with one particular friend; forgive me if I ask an unpleasant question.

Is that friend a person whom you can trust?"

"That friend I could trust with a hundred lives, if I had them to lose," Douglas replied, warmly.

The doctor looked at his patient thoughtfully. He was a man of the world, and the warmth of Mr. Dale's manner told him that the friend in question was a woman.

"Has the person whom you trust so implicitly any beneficial interest in your death?" he asked.

"To some amount; but that person would gain much more by my continuing to live."

"Indeed; then we must needs fall back upon my original idea and painful as it may be to you, the old servant must become the object of your suspicion."

"I cannot believe him capable--"

"Come, come, Mr. Dale," interrupted the physician. "We must look at things as men of the world. It is your duty to ascertain by whom this poison has been administered, in order to protect yourself from the attacks of your insidious destroyer. If you will follow my advice, you will do this; if, on the other hand, you elect to shut your eyes to the danger that assails you, I can only tell you that you will most assuredly pay for your folly by the forfeit of your life."

"What am I to do?" asked Douglas.

"You say that your habits of life are almost rigid in their regularity.

You always breakfast in your own chambers; you always dine and take your after-dinner coffee in the house of one particular friend. With the exception of a biscuit and a glass of sherry taken sometimes at your club, these two meals are all you take during the day. It is, therefore, an indisputable fact, that poison has bee a administered at one or other of these two meals. Your old butler serves one--the servants of your friend prepare the other. Either in your own chambers, or in your friend's house, you have a hidden foe. It is for you to find out where that foe lurks."

"Not in her house," gasped Douglas, unconsciously betraying the depth of his feeling and the sex of his friend; "not in hers. It must be Jarvis whom I have to fear--and yet, no, I cannot believe it. My father's old servant--a man who used to carry me in his arms when I was a boy!"

"You may easily set the question of his guilt or innocence at rest, Mr.

Dale," answered Dr. Westbrook. "Contrive to separate yourself from him for a time. If during that time you find your symptoms cease, you will have the strongest evidence of his guilt; if they still continue, you must look elsewhere."

"I will take your advice," replied Douglas, with a weary sigh; "anything is better than suspense."

Little more was said.

As Douglas walked slowly from the physician's house to the Phoenix Club, he meditated profoundly on the subject of his interview with Dr.

Westbrook.

"Who is the traitor?" he asked himself. "Who? Unhappily there can be no doubt about it. Jarvis is the guilty wretch."

It was with unspeakable pain that Douglas Dale contemplated the idea of his old servant's guilt: his old servant, who had seemed a model of fidelity and devotion!

This very man had attended the deathbed of the rector--Douglas Dale's father--had been recommended by that father to the care of his two sons, had exhibited every appearance of intense grief at the loss of his master.

What could he think, except that Jarvis was guilty? There was but one other direction in which he could look for guilt, and there surely it could not be found.

Who in Hilton House had any interest in his death, except that one person who was above the possibility of suspicion?

He sat by his solitary breakfast-table on the morning after his interview with the physician, and watched Jarvis as he moved to and fro, waiting on his master with what seemed affectionate attention.

Douglas ate little. A failing appetite had been one of the symptoms that accompanied the low fever from which he had lately suffered.

This morning, depression of spirits rendered him still less inclined to eat.

He was thinking of Jarvis and of the past--those careless, happy, childish days, in which this man had been second only to his own kindred in his boyish affection.

While he meditated gravely upon this most painful subject, deliberating as to the manner in which he should commence a conversation that was likely to be a very serious one, he happened to look up, and perceived that he was watched by the man he had been lately watching. His eyes met the gaze of his old servant, and he beheld a strange earnestness in that gaze.

The old man did not flinch on meeting his master's glance.

"I beg your pardon for looking at you so hard, Mr. Douglas," he said; "but I was thinking about you very serious, sir, when you looked up."

"Indeed, Jarvis, and why?"

"Why you see, sir, it was about your appetite as I was thinking. It's fallen off dreadful within the last few weeks. The poor breakfastes as you eats is enough to break a man's heart. And you don't know the pains as I take, sir, to tempt you in the way of breakfastes. That fish, sir, I fetched from Grove's this morning with my own hands. They comes up in a salt-water tank in the bottom of their own boat, sir, as lively as if they was still in their natural eleming, Grove's fish do. But they might be red herrings for any notice as you take of 'em. You're not yourself, Mr. Douglas, that's what it is. You're ill, Mr. Douglas, and you ought to see a doctor. Excuse my presumption, sir, in making these remarks; but if an old family servant that has nursed you on his knees can't speak free, who can?"

"True," Douglas answered with a sigh; "I was a very small boy when you carried me on your shoulders to many a country fair, and you were very good to me, Jarvis."