It might be unjust, it might be ungrateful; but he grew sick at the thought that he was the centre-stone of stratagems and plots.

The smooth face of the Provencal took a wily expression in his eyes; nay, he thought his very footmen watched his steps as if to count how long before they followed his bier.

So, breaking from all roughly, with a shake of his head and a laconic assertion of business in London, he got into his carriage,--his own old bachelor's lumbering travelling-carriage,--and bade the post-boys drive fast, fast! Then, when he felt alone,--quite alone,--and the gates of the lodge swung behind him, he rubbed his hands with a schoolboy's glee, and chuckled aloud, as if he enjoyed, not only the sense, but the fun of his safety; as if he had done something prodigiously cunning and clever.
So when he saw himself snug in his old, well-remembered hotel, in the same room as of yore, when returned, brisk and gay, from the breezes of Weymouth or the brouillards of Paris, he thought he shook hands again with his youth.

Age and lameness, apoplexy and treason, all were forgotten for the moment.

And when, as the excitement died, those grim spectres came back again to his thoughts, they found their victim braced and prepared, standing erect on that hearth for whose hospitality he paid his guinea a day,--his front proud and defying.