ity of the head.

Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn on to fortune and the
sight of his Hesper by Admiral Fakenham's order that the visitor was to
stay at his house until he should 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.