“What kind of man, my dear,” said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of the answer.

“A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.  He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry not to see him.  He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning.  Most impudent he was!—­stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives.  I don’t believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to break his chain and come running round on the gravel—­ for I was in the garden; so I said, `You’d better go away—­the dog is very fierce, and I can’t hold him.’  Do you really know anything of such a man?”

“I believe I know who he is, my dear,” said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual subdued voice, “an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much in days gone by.  However, I presume you will not be troubled by him again.  He will probably come to the Bank—­ to beg, doubtless.”

No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner.  His wife, not sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room and saw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground.  He started nervously and looked up as she entered.

“You look very ill, Nicholas.  Is there anything the matter?”

“I have a good deal of pain in my head,” said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this cause of depression.

“Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar.”

Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the affectionate attention soothed him.  Though always polite, it was his habit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife’s duty.  But to-day, while she was bending over him, he said, “You are very good, Harriet,” in a tone which had something new in it to her ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was, but her woman’s solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he might be going to have an illness.

“Has anything worried you?” she said.  “Did that man come to you at the Bank?”

“Yes; it was as I had supposed.  He is a man who at one time might have done better.  But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature.”

“Is he quite gone away?” said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for certain reasons she refrained from adding, “It was very disagreeable to hear him calling himself a friend of yours.”  At that moment she would not have liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousness that her husband’s earlier connections were not quite on a level with her own.  Not that she knew much about them.  That her husband had at first been employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained a fortune