are at my house. Let's get him
in, and then you must introduce me properly to this young lady, whose
acquaintance I have made in such an unusual manner."

The strange procession had, indeed, arrived at Lord Bearwarden's
residence. It consisted of the proprietor himself, whose right arm was
now completely disabled, but who gesticulated forcibly with his left;
of Dick Stanmore and Nina, listening to his lordship with the utmost
deference and attention; of Jim's senseless body, carried by Simon
Perkins and one policeman, while Tom Ryfe, in close custody of the
other, brought up the rear.

As they entered the hall, Lady Bearwarden's pale, astonished face was
seen looking over the banisters. Dorothea, too, creeping down-stairs,
with some vague idea of escaping from this friendly refuge, and
finding her way back, perhaps, to the cool shining Serpentine, came
full upon the group at the moment when Jim was laid tenderly down by
his bearers, and the policeman whispered audibly to his comrade that,
even if the doctor were in the next street now, he would come too
late!

She ran forward with a wild, despairing cry. She flung herself down by
the long, limp, helpless figure. She raised the drooping head with
its matted locks, its fixed, white, rigid face, and pressed it hard
against her bosom--hard to her wayward, ignorant, warped, but loving
heart.

"Speak to me, Jim!" she moaned once more, rocking backwards and
forwards in her fierce agony. "Speak to me, deary! You'll never speak
again. O! why did they stop _me_ to-day? It's cruel--cruel! Why did
they stop me? We'd have been together before now!"

And the groom of the chambers, an unwilling witness of all these
indecorous proceedings, resolved, for that one night, to do his duty
stanchly by his employer, but give up his place with inflexible
dignity on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXX

UNDER THE ACACIAS

"Out of drawing; flesh tints infamous; chiaroscuro grossly muddled; no
breadth; not much story in it; badly composed; badly treated; badly
painted altogether."

So said the reviews, laying down the infallible law of the writer,
concerning Simon Perkins's great picture. The public followed the
reviews, of course, in accordance with a generous instinct, urging
it to believe that he who can write his own language, not, indeed,
accurately, but with a certain force and rapidity, must therefore
be conversant with all the subjects on which he chooses to declaim.
Statesma