"I was half ashamed to come, Mr. St. John, remembering that it is five years since I came before. But I have met Mrs. St. John repeatedly in London, and sometimes Frederick; so that I have, as it were, seen you at second-hand. I have not been well, too."
Suitable, perhaps, to the difference in their ages, it might be observed that while the elder man called the younger "George," he himself was addressed as "Mr. St. John." But Mr. St. John had been almost grown up when George was a baby, and could remember having nursed him.
"You do not look well, George," he said, scanning the almost transparent face before him. "And--are you taller? You look so."
"That's because I'm thinner. See!"--opening his coat--"I'm nothing but a skeleton."
"What is wrong?"
"I can't tell you. I grow thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker, and that's about all I know. I may pick up as spring comes on, and get right again; but--it may be the other way."
Isaac St. John did not answer. An unpleasant reminiscence of how this young man's father had wasted away eight-and-twenty years ago kept him silent.
"What will you take, George? Have you come to stay with me?"
"I have come to stay with you two hours: I must be home again by nightfall if I can. And I won't take anything until my business with you is over; for I confess it is my own selfish affairs that have brought me here. Let me speak to you first."
"As you will. I am ready."