uld be able to quit his bed, and journey
with him to London, doctor or no doctor. The doctor would not hear of
it. The admiral threatened it every night for the morning, every morning
for the night; and Gower had to submit to postponements balefully
affecting his linen. Remonstrance was not to be thought of; for at a
mere show of reluctance the courtly admiral flushed, frowned, and beat
the bed where he lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was passing
through the various complexions, and had approached the Nubian on
its way to negro. His natural candour checked the downward course. He
mentioned to Mrs. Carthew, with incidental gravity, on a morning at
breakfast, that this article of his attire 'was beginning to resemble
London snow.' She was amused; she promised him a change more resembling
country snow. 'It will save me from buttoning so high up,' he said, as
he thanked her. She then remembered the daily increase of stiffness in
his figure: and a reflection upon his patient waiting, and simpleness,
and lexicographer speech to expose his minor needs, touched her unused
sense of humour on the side where it is tender in women, from being
motherly.

In consequence, she spoke of him with a pleading warmth to the Countess
Livia, who had come down to see the admiral 'concerning an absurd but
annoying rumour running over London.' Gower was out for a walk. He knew
of the affair, Mrs. Carthew said, for an introduction to her excuses of
his clothing.

'But I know the man,' said Livia. 'Lord Fleetwood picked him up
somewhere, and brought him to us. Clever: Why, is he here?'

'He is here, sent to the admiral, as I understand, my lady.'

'Sent by whom?'

Having but a weak vocabulary to defend a delicate position, Mrs. Carthew
stuttered into evasions, after the way of ill-armed persons; and naming
herself a stranger to the circumstances, she feebly suggested that the
admiral ought not to be disturbed before the doctor's next visit; Mr.
Woodseer had been allowed to sit by his bed yesterday only for ten
minutes, to divert him with his talk. She protected in this wretched
manner the poor gentleman she sacrificed and emitted such a smell of
secresy, that Livia wrote three words on her card, for it to be taken
to Admiral Baldwin at once. Mrs. Carthew supplicated faintly; she was
unheeded.

The Countess of Fleetwood mounted the stairs--to descend them with the
knowledge of her being the Dowager Countess of Fleetwood! Henrietta ha