the tailor was a fine fellow, and that he
ought to be taken by the hand. He had money now, and it was thought
that it would be a good thing to bring him into some club. There
was a very strong feeling at the Beaufort that if he were properly
proposed and seconded he would be elected,--not because he was going
to marry an heiress, but because he was losing the heiress whom he
was to have married. If the girl died, then Lord Lovel himself might
bring him forward at the Beaufort. Of all this Daniel himself knew
nothing; but he heard, as all the world heard, that Lady Anna was on
her deathbed.

When the news first reached him,--after a fashion that seemed to him
to be hardly worthy of credit,--he called at the house in Keppel
Street and asked the question. Yes; Lady Anna was very ill; but,
as it happened, Sarah the lady's-maid opened the door, and Sarah
remembered the tailor. She had seen him when he was admitted to
her young mistress, and knew enough of the story to be aware that
he should be snubbed. Her first answer was given before she had
bethought herself; then she snubbed him, and told no one but the
Countess of his visit. After that Daniel went to one of the doctors,
and waited at his door with patience till he could be seen. The
unhappy man told his story plainly. He was Daniel Thwaite, late a
tailor, the man from Keswick, to whom Lady Anna Lovel was engaged. In
charity and loving kindness, would the doctor tell him of the state
of his beloved one? The doctor took him by the hand and asked him
in, and did tell him. His beloved one was then on the very point
of death. Whereupon Daniel wrote to the Countess in humble strains,
himself taking the letter, and waiting without in the street for any
answer that might be vouchsafed. If it was, as he was told, that his
beloved was dying, might he be allowed to stand once at her bedside
and kiss her hand? In about an hour an answer was brought to him at
the area gate. It consisted of his own letter, opened, and returned
to him without a word. He went away too sad to curse, but he declared
to himself that such cruelty in a woman's bosom could exist only in
the bosom of a countess.

But as others heard early in February that Lady Anna was like to
recover, so did Daniel Thwaite. Indeed, his authority was better than
that which reached the clubs, for the doctor still stood his friend.
Could the doctor take a message from him to Lady Anna;--but one word?
No;--the doctor could