'It's not a vow of poverty,' said Dacier.
'He'll find they don't coalesce, or his children will. Once the masses are uppermost! It's a bad day, Dacier, when we 've no more gentlemen in the land. Emmy backs him, so I hold my tongue. To-morrow's a Sunday. I wish you were staying here; I 'd take you to church with me-we shirk it when we haven't a care. It couldn't do you harm. I've heard capital sermons. I've always had the good habit of going to church, Dacier. Now 's the time for remembering them. Ah, my dear fellow, I 'm not a parson. It would have been better for me if I had been.'
And for you too! his look added plainly. He longed to preach; he was impelled to chatter.
Redworth reported the patient perfectly quiet, breathing calmly.
'Laudanum?' asked Sir Lukin. 'Now there's a poison we've got to bless! And we set up in our wisdom for knowing what is good for us!'
He had talked his hearers into a stupefied assent to anything he uttered.
'Mrs. Warwick would like to see you in two or three minutes; she will come down,' Redworth said to Dacier.
'That looks well, eh? That looks bravely,' Sir Lukin cried. 'Diana, Warwick wouldn't leave the room without a certainty. I dread the look of those men; I shall have to shake their hands! And so I do, with all my heart: only—But God bless them! But we must go in, if she's coming down.'
They entered the house, and sat in the drawing-room, where Sir Lukin took up from the table one of his wife's Latin books, a Persius, bearing her marginal notes. He dropped his head on it, with sobs.
The voice of Diana recalled him to the present. She counselled him to control himself; in that case he might for one moment go to the chamber-door and assure himself by the silence that his wife was resting. She brought permission from the surgeons and doctor, on his promise to be still.