nt to shake her.

On the eve of his journey, however, Hugh Flaxman had at last confessed
himself to Catherine and Robert. His obvious plight made any further
scruples on their part futile, and what they had they gave him in the
way of sympathy. Also, Robert, gathering that he already knew much, and
without betraying any confidence of Rose's, gave him a hint or two on
the subject of Langham. But more, not the friendliest mortal could do
for him, and Flaxman went off into exile announcing to a mocking Elsmere
that he should sit pensive on the banks of Norwegian rivers till fortune
had had time to change.

BOOK VII. GAIN AND LOSS.

CHAPTER XLVI.

A hot July had well begun, but still Elsmere was toiling on in Elgood
Street, and could not persuade himself to think of a holiday. Catherine
and the child he had driven away more than once, but the claims upon
himself were becoming so absorbing, he did not know how to go even for a
few weeks. There were certain individuals in particular who depended on
him from day to day. One was Charles Richards' widow. The poor desperate
creature had put herself abjectly into Elsmere's hands. He had sent
her to an asylum, where she had been kindly and skillfully treated, and
after six weeks' abstinence she had just returned to her children, and
was being watched by himself and a competent woman neighbor, whom he had
succeeded in interesting in the case.

Another was a young 'secret springer,' to use the mysterious terms of
the trade--Robson by name--whom Elsmere had originally known as a clever
workman belonging to the watchmaking colony, and a diligent attendant
from the beginning on the Sunday lectures. He was now too ill to leave
his lodgings, and his sickly pessimist personality had established a
special hold on Robert. He was dying of tumor in the throat, and had
become a torment to himself and a disgust to others. There was a spark
of wayward genius in him, however, which enabled him to bear his ills
with a mixture of savage humor and clear-eyed despair. In general
outlook he was much akin to the author of the 'City of Dreadful Night,'
whose poems he read; the loathsome spectacles of London had filled him
with a kind of sombre energy of revolt against all that is. And now
that he could only work intermittently, he would sit brooding for
hours, startling the fellow-workmen who came in to see him with ghastly
Heine-like jokes on his own hideous disease, living no one exact