The unknown then rang the bell, and significantly intimated to Wilton, who answered the summons, that his guests were ready to depart. The domestic bowed and withdrew: but in a few minutes he returned, accompanied by another dependant; and the two domestics proceeded to blindfold both the doctor and the knight, the unknown apologising for the necessity of renewing this process. He himself then conducted them to the carriage which Wilton had ordered round to the door, and into which the stranger followed them.
It then drove away at a rapid rate; and, after taking sundry windings, stopped, at the expiration of an hour, opposite St. James's church, Piccadilly, just as the clock struck two in the morning.
The knight and the doctor descended, having already bade farewell to the mysterious individual whom they left inside; and the carriage instantaneously drove off.
CHAPTER XCIII.
NEWGATE.
Yes—'twas two o'clock in the morning; and the hour was proclaimed by the iron tongues of Time, from the thousand steeples of the mighty metropolis.
How solemnly does the sound of those deep, sonorous, metallic notes break upon the dead silence of that period when darkness spreads its sable wing over an entire hemisphere!
And though 'tis the time for rest, yet repose and slumber are not the companions of every couch.
Crime, sickness, and sorrow close not their lids in balmy sleep, weighed down with weariness though they be: too much happiness has likewise an excitement hostile to the serenity of the pillow.
For sleep is a fickle goddess, who succumbs not to every one's wooing at the hour when her yielding is most desired: now coy and coquettish, she hovers around, yet approaches not quite close:—now sternly and inexorably obstinate, she keeps herself at a great distance, in sullen mood.
And when the iron tongues of Time proclaimed the hour of two, were the eyes of the wretched Torrens or his miserable, guilty wife closed in slumber?