Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental
magazine-writers can talk!"
He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real.
Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts
revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated
painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches
had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his
deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were
alike inconvenient.
"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with
suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?"
Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this
question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of
business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the
relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful
railway company.
"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask
me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken
within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a
persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must
confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a
radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and
acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and
against this medicine is sometimes unavailing.
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