Presently his old housekeeper came in with some tea. She was anxious about him.
"I've brought you this, sir," she said. "You've not tasted a solid morsel since Tuesday morning, and this is Thursday afternoon. Try and take something, sir, it will do you good. You must be getting quite faint, and indeed you look it."
"Now, I call that good of you," the Tenor answered hoarsely, as he took the cup from her hand. "I shall be glad to have some tea, I've been quite longing for something hot to drink."
The woman was examining his face with critical kindness. She noticed the constant attempt to cough, and the painful catching of the breath which rendered the effort abortive.
"I am afraid you are not at all well, sir," she said, expecting him to deny it, but he did not.
"I am not at all well, to tell you the truth," he confessed. "I have just written to the dean to tell him, and—" a fit of coughing rendered the end of the sentence unintelligible. "I want you to post these letters," he was able to say at last distinctly; "send this telegram off at once to my servant, and leave this note at the deanery. That will do as you go home. The man should be here to-morrow, and anything else there may be can be attended to when he arrives."
"You'll let your friends know you're not very well, sir," the housekeeper suggested.
"Those letters"—indicating the ones she held in her hand—"are to tell them."
The woman seeing to whom the letters were addressed, and hearing the Tenor talk in an off-hand way about his manservant as if he had been accustomed to the luxury all his life, feared for a moment that his mind was affected; but then some of those wild surmises as to whom and what he might be, which were rife all over the ancient city when he first arrived, recurred to her, and there slipped from her unawares the remark: "Well, they always said you was somebody, and to look at you one might suppose you was a dook or a markis, sir, but I won't make so bold as to ask."
The Tenor smiled, "I am afraid I am only a Tenor with an abominable cold," he rejoined good-naturedly. "I really think I must nurse it a little. When I have seen the dean, I shall go to bed."