not to mention the fact to my lord. You see, you yourself can
scarcely pardon it. He does not exclude flesh from his table. Blackburn
Tuckham dined there once. "You are a thorough revolutionist, Dr.
Shrapnel," he observed. The doctor does not exclude wine, but he does not
drink it. Poor Tuckham went away entirely opposed 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