And you cannot let me put a word in."

"You came for that, sir?"

"For what else, fool?"

"I was wrong," said the attorney humbly. "I did not understand. Allow me
to say, sir, that I am entirely of your opinion. The young lady--I mean
she shall be removed to-morrow. It--the whole arrangement is
improper--highly improper."

"Why, you go as fast now as you went slowly before," Sir George said,
observing him curiously.

Mr. Fishwick smiled after a sickly fashion. "I did not understand, sir,"
he said. "But it is most unsuitable, most unsuitable. She shall return
to-morrow at the latest."

Sir George, who had said what he had to say, nodded, grunted, and went
away; feeling that he had performed an unpleasant--and somewhat
doubtful--duty under most adverse circumstances. He could not in the
least comprehend the attorney's strange behaviour; but after some
contemptuous reflection, of which nothing came, he dismissed it as one
of the low things to which he had exposed himself by venturing out of
the charmed circle in which he lived. He hoped that the painful series
was now at an end, stepped into his post-chaise, amid the reverent
salaams of the Mitre, the landlord holding the door; and in a few
minutes had rattled over Folly Bridge, and left Oxford behind him.

CHAPTER VII

ACHILLES AND BRISEIS

The honourable Mr. Dunborough's collapse arising rather from loss of
blood than from an injury to a vital part, he was sufficiently recovered
even on the day after the meeting to appreciate his nurse's presence.
Twice he was heard to chuckle without apparent cause; once he strove,
but failed, to detain her hand; while the feeble winks which from time
to time he bestowed on Mr. Thomasson when her back was towards him were
attributed by that gentleman, who should have known the patient, to
reflections closely connected with her charms.

His rage was great, therefore, when three days after the duel, he awoke,
missed her, and found in her place the senior bedmaker of Magdalen--a
worthy woman, learned in simples and with hands of horn, but far from
beautiful. This good person he saluted with a vigour which proved him
already far on the road to recovery; and when he was tired of swearing,
he wept and threw his nightcap at her. Finally, between one and the
other, and neither availing to bring back his Briseis, he fell into a
fever; which, as he was kept happed up in a box-bed, in a close room,
with every window shut and ever