Lord Bearwarden turned out of St. James's Street it
was too late to think of anything but immediate bed. Her ladyship's
confessions, if she had any to make, must be put off till
breakfast-time, and, alas! by _her_ breakfast-time, which was none of
the earliest, my lord was well down in his sheepskin, riding out of
the barrack-gate in command of his guard.

"Fronte capillata post est Oceasio calav"

Bald-pated Father Time had succeeded in slipping his forelock out of
Maud's hand the evening before, and, henceforth, behind his bare and
mocking skull, those delicate, disappointed fingers must close on
empty air in vain!

CHAPTER XXI

FURENS QUID FOEMINA

We left Tom Ryfe, helpless, unconscious, more dead than alive,
supported between a man and woman up a back street in Westminster: we
must return to him after a considerable interval, pale, languid, but
convalescent, on a sofa in his own room under his uncle's roof. He is
only now beginning to understand that he has been dangerously ill;
that according to his doctor nothing but a "splendid constitution" and
unprecedented medical skill have brought him back from the threshold
of that grim portal known as death's door. This he does not quite
believe, but is aware, nevertheless, that he is much enfeebled, and
that his system has sustained what he himself calls "a deuced awkward
shake." Even now he retains no very clear idea of what happened to
him. He remembers vaguely, as in a dream, certain bare walls of a dim
and gloomy chamber, tapestried with cobwebs, smelling of damp and
mould like a vault, certain broken furniture, shabby and scarce, on
a bare brick floor, with a grate in which no fire could have been
kindled without falling into the middle of the room. He recalls that
racking head-ache, that scorching thirst, and those pains in all the
bones of a wan, wasted figure lying under a patchwork quilt on a
squalid bed. A figure, independent of, and dissevered from himself,
yet in some degree identified with his thoughts, his sufferings,
and his memories. Somebody nursed the figure, too--he is sure of
that--bringing it water, medicines, food, and leeches for its aching
temples; smoothing its pillow and arranging its bed-clothes, in those
endless nights, so much longer, yet scarce more dismal than the
days,--somebody, whose voice he never heard, whose face he never saw,
yet in whose slow, cautious tread there seemed a familiar sound. Once,
in delirium, he in