eminent practitioners from London, one of whom was a gray-headed man, the other singularly young for the fame he had obtained. But then he was a genuine enthusiast in his art.
CHAPTER XLV.
Griffith, white as a ghost, and unable to shake off the forebodings Catharine had communicated to him, walked incessantly up and down the room; and, at his earnest request, one or other of the four doctors in attendance was constantly coming to him with information.
The case proceeded favorably, and, to Griffith's surprise and joy, a healthy boy was born about two o'clock in the morning. The mother was reported rather feverish, but nothing to cause alarm.
Griffith threw himself on two chairs and fell fast asleep.
Towards morning he found himself shaken, and there was Ashley, the young doctor, standing beside him with a very grave face. Griffith started up, and cried, "What is wrong, in God's name?"
"I am sorry to say there has been a sudden hemorrhage, and the patient is much exhausted."
"She is dying, she is dying!" cried Griffith, in anguish.
"Not dying. But she will infallibly sink, unless some unusual circumstance occur to sustain vitality."
Griffith laid hold of him. "O sir, take my whole fortune, but save her! save her! save her!"
"Mr. Gaunt," said the young doctor, "be calm, or you will make matters worse. There is one chance to save her; but my professional brethren are prejudiced against it. However, they have consented, at my earnest request, to refer my proposal to you. She is sinking for want of blood; if you consent to my opening a vein and transfusing healthy blood from a living subject into hers, I will undertake the operation. You had better come and see her; you will be more able to judge."
"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.
