| 'Come what come may, Time and the hour run through the roughest day.' |
But this is a dangerous business—a cursed business. Why does not Speyer write?"
As his thoughts ran in this strain, he looked up, and his eye caught that of his wife. She was struck with his troubled expression.
"You look anxious and care-worn. Are you ill?"
"Come to me, Edith," said Vinal, with a faint smile.
She came to the side of his chair, and he took her hand.
"Edith, I am not well to-day. My head swims. This long confinement is eating away my life by inches."
"In a week more, I trust, you will be able to move again. The country air will give you new life. But why do you look so troubled?"
"Dreams, Edith,—bad dreams, like Hamlet's, I suppose. It is very strange,—I cannot imagine why it is,—but to-day I have felt oppressed, weighed down, shadowed as if a cloud hung over me. I am not myself. A man is a mere slave to his nervous system, and when that is overthrown, his whole soul is shaken with it. The country is my hope, Edith. We will go there together, soon, and begin life anew."
A knock at the door interrupted him.