There was a gleam of wintry sunset shining in at the window. It fell upon the sick man's face. God! what a face, seamed, scarred, ravaged by that foul disease! God's image for ever marred, humanity almost obliterated, by that dread visitation. He stood beside the bed staring at that disfigured sleeper, as if that sickening aspect had turned him into stone. Then he recoiled shuddering from that loathsome bed, the curtain dropped from his trembling hand, and he fell back upon his pallet in a mute agony of despair.
There was no longer room for doubt. He had been put into this contagious den with a deliberate purpose. This was Topsparkle's ghastly answer to his incautious menaces. He had aroused his master's suspicions, awakened his fears; and this was how Vyvyan Topsparkle defended himself.
He lay shivering under the dingy coverlet, his limbs like ice, his head on fire, meditating his revenge. He was not going to lie there like an unreasoning animal till death released him from suffering. He would be even with Vyvyan Topsparkle before he died, brief as his time might be.
The beldame came in presently, before he had had time to shape his thoughts. She brought two basins of gruel, and a rushlight in a great iron cage, which she set upon the empty hearth, where it looked like a lighthouse shedding long slanting lines of light over a dark sea.
"You'll not want anything more to-night, will you, good gentleman?" she asked. "I'm going home to my family, and there's no one else in the house that cares to come into this room; so I hope you'll spend a comfortable night, and to-morrow morning old Biddy Flanagan will come and look after ye again. Lord! how sweet he sleeps!" looking down at the slumberer behind the curtain. "Sure, there never was such a cure; but I'm afraid his beauty is a thrifle damaged, poor dear sowl."
"What's the hour, woman?" asked Fétis.
"Sure, darlint, 'tis just on the stroke of six."
"And quite dark outside?"
"As black as your hat, surr. God bless your honour, and give yez a good night's rest!"
She was gone, in haste to return to her brood, and to feed them with broken victuals secreted about her person at odd intervals during her daily duties. 'Twas almost as tender a thing, though not altogether so honest, as the maternal ministrations of the pelican.