‘Good, of course?’

‘Ah me! the pleasure of the absence of pain.  He is not gone.’

Lord Romfrey liked her calm resignation.

‘There’s a Mr. Lydiard,’ he said, ’a friend of Nevil’s, and a friend of Louise Devereux’s.’

‘Yes; we hear from him every four hours,’ Rosamund rejoined.  ’Mention him to her before me.’

‘That’s exactly what I was going to tell you to do before me,’ said her husband, smiling.

’Because, Everard, is it not so?—­widows . . . and she loves this gentleman!’

’Certainly, my dear; I think with you about widows.  The world asks them to practise its own hypocrisy.  Louise Devereux was married to a pipe; she’s the widow of tobacco ash.  We’ll make daylight round her.’

’How good, how kind you are, my lord!  I did not think so shrewd!  But benevolence is almost all-seeing:  You said you spoke to Dr. Shrapnel twice.  Was he . . . polite?’

‘Thoroughly upset, you know.’

‘What did he say?’

’What was it?  “Beauchamp!  Beauchamp!” the first time; and the second time he said he thought it had left off raining.’

‘Ah!’ Rosamund drooped her head.

She looked up.  ’Here is Louise.  My lord has had a long conversation with Mr. Lydiard.’

‘I trust he will come here before you leave us,’ added the earl.

Rosamund took her hand.  ’My lord has been more acute than I, or else your friend is less guarded than you.’

‘What have you seen?’ said the blushing lady.

’Stay.  I have an idea you are one of the women I promised to Cecil Baskelett,’ said the earl.  ‘Now may I tell him there’s no chance?’

‘Oh! do.’

They spent so very pleasant an evening that the earl settled down into a comfortable expectation of the renewal of his old habits in the September and October season.  Nevil’s frightful cry played on his ear-drum at whiles, but not too affectingly.  He conducted Rosamund to her room, kissed her, hoped she would sleep well, and retired to his good hard bachelor’s bed, where he confidently supposed he would sleep.  The sleep of a dyspeptic, with a wilder than the monstrous Bevisham dream, befell him, causing him to rise at three in the morning and proceed to his lady’s chamber, to assure himself that at least she slept well.  She was awake.

‘I thought you might come,’ she said.

He reproached her gently for indulging foolish nervous fears.

She replied, ’No, I do not; I am easier about Nevil.  I begin to think he will live.  I have something at my heart that prevents me from sleeping.  It concerns me.  Whether he is to live or die, I should like him to know he has not striven in vain—­not in everything:  not where my conscience tells me he was right, and we, I, wrong—­utterly wrong, wickedly wrong.’

‘My dear girl, you are exciting yourself.’

’No; feel my pulse.  The dead of night brings out Nevil to me like the Writing on the Wall.  It shall not be said he failed in everything.  Shame to us if it could be said!  He tried to make me see what my duty was, and my honour.’