ng.

'Because, Everard, is it not so?--widows... and she loves this
gentleman!'

'Certainly, my dear; I think with you about widows. The world asks them
to practise its own hypocrisy. Louise Devereux was married to a pipe;
she's the widow of tobacco ash. We'll make daylight round her.'

'How good, how kind you are, my lord! I did not think so shrewd! But
benevolence is almost all-seeing: You said you spoke to Dr. Shrapnel
twice. Was he... polite?'

'Thoroughly upset, you know.'

'What did he say?'

'What was it? "Beauchamp! Beauchamp!" the first time; and the second
time he said he thought it had left off raining.'

'Ah!' Rosamund drooped her head.

She looked up. 'Here is Louise. My lord has had a long conversation with
Mr. Lydiard.'

'I trust he will come here before you leave us,' added the earl.

Rosamund took her hand. 'My lord has been more acute than I, or else
your friend is less guarded than you.'

'What have you seen?' said the blushing lady.

'Stay. I have an idea you are one of the women I promised to Cecil
Baskelett,' said the earl. 'Now may I tell him there's no chance?'

'Oh! do.'

They spent so very pleasant an evening that the earl settled down into
a comfortable expectation of the renewal of his old habits in the
September and October season. Nevil's frightful cry played on his
ear-drum at whiles, but not too affectingly. He conducted Rosamund to
her room, kissed her, hoped she would sleep well, and retired to his
good hard bachelor's bed, where he confidently supposed he would sleep.
The sleep of a dyspeptic, with a wilder than the monstrous Bevisham
dream, befell him, causing him to rise at three in the morning and
proceed to his lady's chamber, to assure himself that at least she slept
well. She was awake.

'I thought you might come,' she said.

He reproached her gently for indulging foolish nervous fears.

She replied, 'No, I do not; I am easier about Nevil. I begin to think he
will live. I have something at my heart that prevents me from sleeping.
It concerns me. Whether he is to live or die, I should like him to know
he has not striven in vain--not in everything: not where my conscience
tells me he was right, and we, I, wrong--utterly wrong, wickedly wrong.'

'My dear girl, you are exciting yourself.'

'No; feel my pulse. The dead of night brings out Nevil to me like the
Writing on the Wall. It shall not be said he failed in everything. Shame
to us if it could be said! He