Had he not surprised the quick suspicion in Fleetwood's glance, when he told him he had slipped, and sprained his ankle?
What if he had been drunk when he fell--fell on his own doorsteps, carried into the old Siward house by old Siward servants, drunk as his forefathers?
It was none of Fleetwood's business.

It was none of the servants' business.

It was nobody's business except his own.
Who the devil were all these people, to pry into his affairs and doctor him and dose him and form secret leagues to disobey him, and hide decanters from him?
Why should anybody have the impertinence to meddle with him?
Of what concern to them were his vices or his virtues?
The tears dried in his hot eyes; he jerked the old-fashioned bell savagely; and after a long while he heard servants whispering together in the passageway outside his door.
He lay very still in his chair; his hearing had become abnormally acute, but he could not make out what they were saying; and as the dull, intestinal aching grew sharper, parching, searing every strained muscle in throat and chest, he struck the table beside him, and clenched his teeth in the fierce rush of agony that swept him from head to foot, crying out an inarticulate menace on his household.

And Dr.Grisby came into the room from the outer shadows of the hall.
He was very small, very meagre, very bald, and clean-shaven, with a face like a nut-cracker; and the brown wig he wore was atrocious, and curled forward over his colourless ears.

He wore steel-rimmed spectacles, each glass divided into two lenses; and he stood on tiptoe to look out through the upper lenses on the world, and always bent almost double to use the lower or reading lenses.
Besides that, he affected frilled shirts, and string ties, which nobody had ever seen snugly tied.