when the young
man's eyes alighted on a procession of three four-wheelers, coasting
round the garden railing and bound for the Superfluous Mansion. They
were laden with formidable boxes; moved in a military order, one
following another; and, by the extreme slowness of their advance,
inspired Somerset with the most serious ideas of his tenant's malady.

By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the
pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the military
gentleman of the morning and two very stalwart porters. These proceeded
instantly to take possession of the house; with their own hands, and
firmly rejecting Somerset's assistance, they carried in the various
crates and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and transferred to the
back drawing-room the bed in which the tenant was to sleep; and it was
not until the bustle of arrival had subsided, and the arrangements were
complete, that there descended, from the third of the three vehicles, a
gentleman of great stature and broad shoulders, leaning on the shoulder
of a woman in a widow's dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and
muffled in a coloured comforter.

Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into the
back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended on the
house; and had not the nurse appeared a little before half-past ten,
and, with a strong brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house in
the neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to be
alone in the Superfluous Mansion.

Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
sight of his mysterious lodger. The doors of the drawing-room flat were
never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro, the
tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apartments. Visitors,
indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours
of night or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some
decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of
Somerset, displeasing. A certain air of fear and secrecy was common to
them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the
military gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at
all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners were
not suggestive of a university career. The nurse, again, was scarcely a
desirable house-fellow. Since her arrival, the fall of whisky in