He was no longer
inclined to despise them.
It was dreary work to sit by the bedside watching that familiar face, to
which fever and delirium had given a strange weird look; dismal work to
count the moments, and wonder when that voice, now so thick of utterance
as it went on muttering incoherent sentences and meaningless phrases,
would be able to reply to those questions which Gilbert Fenton was
burning to ask.
Was it a guilty conscience, the dull slow agony of remorse, which had
stricken this man down--this strong powerfully-built man, who was a
stranger to illness and all physical suffering? Was the body only crushed
by the burden of the mind? Gilbert could not find any answer to these
questions. He only knew that his sometime friend lay there helpless,
unconscious, removed beyond his reach as completely as if he had been
lying in his coffin.
"O God, it is hard to bear!" he said half aloud: "it is a bitter trial to
bear. If this illness should end in death, I may never know Marian's
fate."
He sat in the sick man's room all through that long dismal afternoon,
waiting to see the doctor, and with the same hopeless thoughts repeating
themselves perpetually in his mind.
It was nearly eight o'clock when Mr. Mew at last made his evening visit.
He was a grave gray-haired little man, with a shrewd face and a pleasant
manner; a man who inspired Gilbert with confidence, and whose presence
was cheering in a sick-room; but he did not speak very hopefully of John
Saltram.
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