etter.

From the 2d to the 7th of December, the steward waited punctually on the
platform, saw the trains come in, and satisfied himself, evening after
evening, that the travelers were all strangers to him. From the 2d to
the 7th of December, Miss Gwilt (to return to the name under which
she is best known in these pages) received his daily report, sometimes
delivered personally, sometimes sent by letter. The doctor, to whom
the reports were communicated, received them in his turn with unabated
confidence in the precautions that had been adopted up to the morning of
the 8th. On that date the irritation of continued suspense had produced
a change for the worse in Miss Gwilt's variable temper, which was
perceptible to every one about her, and which, strangely enough, was
reflected by an equally marked change in the doctor's manner when he
came to pay his usual visit. By a coincidence so extraordinary that his
enemies might have suspected it of not being a coincidence at all, the
morning on which Miss Gwilt lost her patience proved to be also the
morning on which the doctor lost his confidence for the first time.

"No news, of course," he said, sitting down with a heavy sigh. "Well!
well!"

Miss Gwilt looked up at him irritably from her work.

"You seem strangely depressed this morning," she said. "What are you
afraid of now?"

"The imputation of being afraid, madam," answered the doctor, solemnly,
"is not an imputation to cast rashly on any man--even when he belongs to
such an essentially peaceful profession as mine. I am not afraid. I
am (as you more correctly put it in the first instance) strangely
depressed. My nature is, as you know, naturally sanguine, and I only see
to-day what but for my habitual hopefulness I might have seen, and ought
to have seen, a week since."

Miss Gwilt impatiently threw down her work. "If words cost money," she
said, "the luxury of talking would be rather an expensive luxury in your
case!"

"Which I might have seen, and ought to have seen," reiterated the
doctor, without taking the slightest notice of the interruption, "a week
since. To put it plainly, I feel by no means so certain as I did that
Mr. Armadale will consent, without a struggle, to the terms which it is
my interest (and in a minor degree yours) to impose on him. Observe! I
don't question our entrapping him successfully into the Sanitarium: I
only doubt whether he will prove quite as manageable as I originally
anticipate