pposed to a Radical he
could not even meet as a boon-fellow. I begged him not to mention the
circumstances, as I have begged you. He pledged me his word to that
effect solemnly; he correctly felt that if the truth were known, there
would be further cause for the reprobation of the man who had been his
host.'

'And that poor girl, Nevil?'

'Miss Denham? She contracted the habit of eating meat at school,
and drinking wine in Paris, and continues it, occasionally. Now run
upstairs. Insist on food. Inform Madame de Rouaillout that her brother
M. le comte de Croisnel will soon be here, and should not find her ill.
Talk to her as you women can talk. Keep the blinds down in her room;
light a dozen wax-candles. Tell her I have no thought but of her. It's
a lie: of no woman but of her: that you may say. But that you can't
say. You can say I am devoted--ha, what stuff! I've only to open my
mouth!--say nothing of me: let her think the worst--unless it comes to a
question of her life: then be a merciful good woman...' He squeezed her
fingers, communicating his muscular tremble to her sensitive woman's
frame, and electrically convincing her that he was a lover.

She went up-stairs. In ten minutes she descended, and found him pacing
up and down the hall. 'Madame de Rouaillout is much the same,' she said.
He nodded, looked up the stairs, and about for his hat and gloves, drew
on the gloves, fixed the buttons, blinked at his watch, and settled his
hat as he was accustomed to wear it, all very methodically, and talking
rapidly, but except for certain precise directions, which were not
needed by so careful a housekeeper and nurse as Rosamund was known to
be, she could not catch a word of meaning. He had some appointment,
it seemed; perhaps he was off for a doctor--a fresh instance of his
masculine incapacity to understand patient endurance. After opening
the housedoor, and returning to the foot of the stairs, listening and
sighing, he disappeared.

It struck her that he was trying to be two men at once.

The litter of newspaper sheets in the morning-room brought his
exclamation to her mind: 'They're at me!' Her eyes ran down the columns,
and were seized by the print of his name in large type. A leading
article was devoted to Commander's Beauchamp's recent speech delivered
in the great manufacturing town of Gunningham, at a meeting under
the presidency of the mayor, and his replies to particular questions
addressed to him; one being