f
his presence, and even before I reached him it had rolled over me in a
prodigious wave that I had lost nothing whatever. I can't begin to say
how the fact of his appearance crowned the communication my interlocutor
had just made me, nor in what a bright confusion of many things I found
myself facing poor Briss. One of these things was precisely that he had
never been so much poor Briss as at this moment. That ministered to the
confusion as well as to the brightness, for if his being there at all
renewed my sources and replenished my current--spoke all, in short, for
my gain--so, on the other hand, in the light of what I had just had from
Obert, his particular aspect was something of a shock. I can't present
this especial impression better than by the mention of my instant
certitude that what he had come for was to bring me a message and that
somehow--yes, indubitably--this circumstance seemed to have placed him
again at the very bottom of his hole. It was down in that depth that he
let me see him--it was out of it that he delivered himself. Poor Briss!
poor Briss!--I had asked myself before he spoke with what kindness
enough I could meet him. Poor Briss! poor Briss!--I am not even now sure
that I didn't first meet him by _that_ irrepressible murmur. It was in
it all for me that, thus, at midnight, he had traversed on his errand
the length of the great dark house. I trod with him, over the velvet and
the marble, through the twists and turns, among the glooms and glimmers
and echoes, every inch of the way, and I don't know what humiliation,
for him, was constituted there, between us, by his long pilgrimage. It
was the final expression of his sacrifice.

"My wife has something to say to you."

"Mrs. Briss? Good!"--and I could only hope the candour of my surprise
was all I tried to make it. "Is she with you there?"

"No, but she has asked me to say to you that if you'll presently be in
the drawing-room she'll come."

Who could doubt, as I laid my hand on his shoulder, fairly patting it,
in spite of myself, for applause--who could doubt where I would
presently be? "It's most uncommonly good of both of you."

There was something in his inscrutable service that, making him almost
august, gave my dissimulated eagerness the sound of a heartless
compliment. _I_ stood for the hollow chatter of the vulgar world, and
he--oh, he was as serious as he was conscious; which was enough. "She
says you'll know what she wishes--and sh