"Are you ill ?" "No, there ain't anything the matter," said the old man.

"But I guess I'll lay down on your settee a minute." He tottered with Beaton's help to the aesthetic couch covered with a tiger-skin, on which Beaton had once thought of painting a Cleopatra; but he could never get the right model.

As the old man stretched himself out on it, pale and suffering, he did not look much like a Cleopatra, but Beaton was struck with his effectiveness, and the likeness between him and his daughter; she would make a very good Cleopatra in some ways.

All the time, while these thoughts passed through his mind, he was afraid Dryfoos would die.
The old man fetched his breath in gasps, which presently smoothed and lengthened into his normal breathing.

Beaton got him a glass of wine, and after tasting it he sat up.
"You've got to excuse me," he said, getting back to his characteristic grimness with surprising suddenness, when once he began to recover himself.