On the second morning I heard her dear voice—­Oh, how dear now!—­ outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep.  I heard her answer softly, “Don’t disturb her, Charley, for the world!”

“How does my own Pride look, Charley?” I inquired.

“Disappointed, miss,” said Charley, peeping through the curtain.

“But I know she is very beautiful this morning.”

“She is indeed, miss,” answered Charley, peeping.  “Still looking up at the window.”

With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when raised like that!

I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.

“Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way into the room.  Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the last!  Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die.”

“I never will!  I never will!” she promised me.

“I believe it, my dear Charley.  And now come and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand.  For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind.”

CHAPTER XXXII

The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln’s Inn—­perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day—­and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed.  The bell that rings at nine o’clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge.  From tiers of staircase windows clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars.  In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land.  Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper.  Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers—­Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words.  Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook’s