'More likely he would have bored me into going. Poor Tina! I should almost like to hear him jaw again! After all, you and he never promised, and I did.'
'I wish I had,' said Fulbert; 'I am awfully afraid they are getting hold of it in the town.'
'So am I. Mowbray Smith looked me all over, and asked me after Clement, when I met him just now in the street, as if he had some malice in his head.'
'What did you tell him?'
'I said he was in a state of collapse, and that serious fears were entertained for his life and reason; and then he warned me against the nineteenth-century manners, and I thanked him and made a bow, and now I suppose he is gone to tell my Lady.'
When Felix was free in the evening, he found Clement dressed, and sitting over the fire in his room—so well indeed, that he might have been downstairs, but that he shrank from every one; and that fire had been the fruit of such persevering battles of Wilmet and Sibby with the smoke and soot, that it would have been a waste of good labour to have deserted it.
'Well, Clem, you are better?'
'Yes, thank you.'
'Head-ache gone?'
'Nearly,' with a heavy sigh.