To-day you are safe. To-night
you may be doomed."
"I have no fear, sir. You are not the first plague-patient I have nursed."
"And thou fanciest thyself pestilence-proof! Sweet girl, it may be that the
divine lymph which fills those azure veins has no affinity with poisons
that slay rude mortals like myself."
"Will you ever be talking?" she said with grave reproach, and left him to
the care of Mrs. Basset, whose comfortable and stolid personality did not
stimulate his imagination.
She had a strong desire to explore that city of which she had yet seen so
little, and her patient being now arrived at a state of his disorder when
it was best for him to be tempted to prolonged slumbers by silence and
solitude, she put on her hood and gloves and went out alone to see the
horrors of the deserted streets, of which nurse Basset had given her so
appalling a picture.
It was four o'clock, and the afternoon was at its hottest; the blue of a
cloudless sky was reflected in the blue of the silent river, where, instead
of the flotilla of gaily painted wherries, the procession of gilded barges,
the music and song, the ceaseless traffic of Court and City, there was only
the faint ripple of the stream, or here and there a solitary barge
creeping slowly down the tide with ineffectual sail napping in the sultry
atmosphere.
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