CHAPTER LI

IN THE NIGHT

The delirious voice haunted him. It came no longer accompanied by images
and likenesses to this and that of animate nature, which were relieving
and distracting; it came to him in its mortal nakedness--an afflicting
incessant ringing peal, bare as death's ribs in telling of death. When
would it stop? And when it stopped, what would succeed? What ghastly
silence!

He walked to within view of the lights of Dr. Shrapnel's at night: then
home to his hotel.

Miss Denham's power of commanding sleep, as he could not, though contrary
to custom he tried it on the right side and the left, set him thinking of
her. He owned she was pretty. But that, he contended, was not the word;
and the word was undiscoverable. Not Cecilia Halkett herself had so
high-bred an air, for Cecilia had not her fineness of feature and full
quick eyes, of which the thin eyelids were part of the expression. And
Cecilia sobbed, snifed, was patched about the face, reddish, bluish.
This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief: she did her work for
three-and-twenty hours, and fell to her sleep of one hour like a soldier.
Lord Romfrey could not recollect anything in a young woman that had taken
him so much as the girl's tossing out of the rug and covering herself,
lying down and going to sleep under his nose, absolutely independent of
his presence.

She had not betrayed any woman's petulance with him for his conduct to