"Bede looks more worried than usual--and that need not be," observed William Ollivera. "What is it, I wonder? To me he has the air of a man silently fretting himself into his grave."
"You know what it is, William," said Mr. Greatorex, in a low tone, and calling his nephew as he often did, by his second Christian name. "Bede's wife is a great worry. But there's another."
"What is it?"
"Illness," breathed Mr. Greatorex. "Symptoms that we don't like have shown themselves in him lately. However--they may pass away. The doctors think they will."
"I came here to meet Kene, whom I very particularly wish to see," resumed the clergyman, after a pause. "Bede said he expected him."
"Ay; some magnet must have drawn you, apart from that," pointing his thumb at the rooms above. And Mr. Ollivera explained why he was seeking the Judge.
"I thought something fresh might have arisen in the old case; or at least that you fancied it," observed Mr. Greatorex. "You must be coming round to our way of thinking, William. Time goes on, but that stands still."
"I shall never come round to it."
"John has been dead four years and two months, now," pursued Mr. Greatorex. "And it has stood still all that time."
William Ollivera, leaned forward in his chair, and the fire and the lamp alike played on his wasted face, on the bright flush of emotion that rose in his thin cheeks.