"Mr. Redlaw!" he exclaimed, and started up.

Redlaw put out his arm.

"Don't come nearer to me. I will sit here. Remain you, where you
are!"

He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced at the
young man standing leaning with his hand upon the couch, spoke with
his eyes averted towards the ground.

"I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no matter, that one
of my class was ill and solitary. I received no other description
of him, than that he lived in this street. Beginning my inquiries
at the first house in it, I have found him."

"I have been ill, sir," returned the student, not merely with a
modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, "but am greatly
better. An attack of fever--of the brain, I believe--has weakened
me, but I am much better. I cannot say I have been solitary, in my
illness, or I should forget the ministering hand that has been near
me."

"You are speaking of the keeper's wife," said Redlaw.

"Yes." The student bent his head, as if he rendered her some
silent homage.

The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, which
rendered him more like a marble image on the tomb of the man who