The revelation scarcely seemed a surprise to him.  Little by little that suspicion, so vague and dim at first, had gathered strength, and now that all his doubts received confirmation from those unconscious lips, it seemed to him as if he had known his friend’s falsehood for a long time.

“Marian, come here.  Come, child, come,” the sick man cried in feeble imploring tones.  “What, are you afraid of me?  Is this death?  Am I dead, and parted from her?  Would anything else keep her from me when I call for her, the poor child that loved me so well?  And I have wished myself free of her—­God forgive me!—­wished myself free.”

The words were muttered in broken gasping fragments of sentences; but Gilbert heard them and understood them very easily.  Then, after looking about the room, and looking full at Gilbert without seeing him, John Saltram fell back upon his tumbled pillows and closed his eyes.  Gilbert heard a slipshod step in the outer room, and turning round, found himself face to face with the laundress—­that mature and somewhat depressing matron whom he had sought out a little time before, when he wanted to discover Mr. Saltram’s whereabouts.

This woman, upon seeing him, burst forth immediately into jubilation.

“O, sir, what a providence it is that you’ve come!” she cried.  “Poor dear gentleman, he has been that ill, and me not knowing what to do more than a baby, except in the way of sending for a doctor when I see how bad he was, and waiting on him myself day and night, which I have done faithful, and am that worn-out in consequence, that I shake like a haspen, and can’t touch a bit of victuals.  I had but just slipped round to the court, while he was asleep, poor dear, to give my children their dinner; for it’s a hard trial, sir, having a helpless young family depending upon one; and it would but be fair that all I have gone through should be considered; for though I says it as shouldn’t, there isn’t one of your hired nurses would do more; and I’m willing to continue of it, provisoed as I have help at nights, and my trouble considered in my wages.”

“You need have no apprehension; you shall be paid for your trouble.  Has he been long ill?”

“Well, sir, he took the cold as were the beginning of his illness a fortnight ago come next Thursday.  You may remember, perhaps, as it came on awful wet in the afternoon, last Thursday week, and Mr. Saltram was out in the rain, and walked home in it,—­not being able to get a cab, I suppose, or perhaps not caring to get one, for he was always a careless gentleman in such respects,—­and come in wet through to the skin; and instead of changing his clothes, as a Christian would have done, just gives himself a shake like, as he might have been a New-fondling dog that had been swimming, and sits down before the fire, which of course drawed out the steam from his things and made it worse, and writes away for dear life till twelve o’clock that night, having something particular to finish for them magazines, he says; and so, when I come to tidy-up a bit the last thing at night, I found him sitting at the table writing, and didn’t take no more notice of me than a dog, which was his way, though never meant unkindly—­quite the reverse.”