who were sunk in the mud of the traders:
the traders, who were sinking in the mud of the workmen: the workmen, who
were like harbour-flats at ebb tide round a stuck-fast fleet of vessels
big and little.

Decidedly a fellow like Nevil would be missed by him!

These English, huddling more and more in flocks, turning to lumps,
getting to be cut in a pattern and marked by a label--how they bark and
snap to rend an obnoxious original! One may chafe at the botheration
everlastingly raised by the fellow; but if our England is to keep her
place she must have him, and many of him. Have him? He's gone!

Lord Romfrey reasoned himself into pathetic sentiment by degrees.

He purchased the note paper and envelopes in the town for Cecilia. Late
in the afternoon he deposited them on the parlour table at Dr.
Shrapnel's. Miss Denham received him. She was about to lie down for her
hour of rest on the sofa. Cecilia was upstairs. He inquired if there was
any change in his nephew's condition.

'Not any,' said Miss Denham.

The voice was abroad for proof of that.

He stood with a swelling heart.

Jenny flung out a rug to its length beside the sofa, and; holding it by
one end, said: 'I must have my rest, to be of service, my lord.'

He bowed. He was mute and surprised.

The young lady was like no person of her age and sex that he remembered
ever to have met.

'I will close the door,' he said, retiring softly.

'Do not, my lord.'

The rug was over her, up to her throat, and her eyes were shut. He looked
back through the doorway in going out. She was asleep.

'Some delirium. Gannet of good hope. All in the usual course'; he
transmitted intelligence to his wife.

A strong desire for wine at his dinner-table warned him of something
wrong with his iron nerves.

CHAPTER LI

IN THE NIGHT

The delirious voice haunted him. It came no longer accompanied by images
and likenesses to this and that of animate nature, which were relieving
and distracting; it came to him in its mortal nakedness--an afflicting
incessant ringing peal, bare as death's ribs in telling of death. When
would it stop? And when it stopped, what would succeed? What ghastly
silence!

He walked to within view of the lights of Dr. Shrapnel's at night: then
home to his hotel.

Miss Denham's power of commanding sleep, as he could not, though contrary
to custom he tried it on the right side and the left, set him thinking of
her. He owned she was pretty. But