But now, at least, there would be this strong,
capable woman to share in the long night watch; and if the patient grew
desperate there would be three pair of hands to protect him from his own
fury.
She made her arrangements promptly and decisively. Mrs. Basset was to stay
all night with her in the patient's chamber, with such needful intervals of
rest as each might take without leaving the sick-room; and Stokes was
first to see to the fastening of the various basement doors, and to assure
himself that there was no one hidden either in the cellars or on the ground
floor; also to examine all upper chambers, and lock all doors; and was
then to make himself a bed in a dressing closet adjoining Lord Fareham's
chamber, and was to lie there in his clothes, ready to help at any hour of
the night, should help be wanted.
CHAPTER VI.
BETWEEN LONDON AND OXFORD.
Three nights and days had gone since Angela first set her foot upon the
threshold of Fareham House, and in all that time she had not once gone out
into the great city, where dismal silence reigned by day and night, save
for the hideous cries of the men with the dead-carts, calling to the
inhabitants of the infected houses to bring out their dead, and roaring
their awful summons with as automatic a monotony as if they had been
hawking some common necessary of life--a dismal cry that was but
occasionally varied by the hollow tones of a Puritan fanatic, stalking,
gaunt and half clad, along the Strand, and shouting some sentence of fatal
bodement from the Hebrew prophets; just as before the siege of Titus there
walked through the streets of Jerusalem one who cried, "Woe to the wicked
city!" and whose voice could not be stopped but by death.
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