The young lady was like no person of her age and sex that he remembered ever to have met.
'I will close the door,' he said, retiring softly.
'Do not, my lord.'
The rug was over her, up to her throat, and her eyes were shut. He looked back through the doorway in going out. She was asleep.
'Some delirium. Gannet of good hope. All in the usual course'; he transmitted intelligence to his wife.
A strong desire for wine at his dinner-table warned him of something wrong with his iron nerves.
CHAPTER LI
IN THE NIGHT
The delirious voice haunted him. It came no longer accompanied by images and likenesses to this and that of animate nature, which were relieving and distracting; it came to him in its mortal nakedness—an afflicting incessant ringing peal, bare as death's ribs in telling of death. When would it stop? And when it stopped, what would succeed? What ghastly silence!
He walked to within view of the lights of Dr. Shrapnel's at night: then home to his hotel.