They seemed to lighten in the dark (for she kept the curtains closed) as she moved about the room on velvet paws like a cat.

There Miss Crawley lay for days--ever so many days--Mr.Bute reading books of devotion to her: for nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the stealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs.Bute's twinkling eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened ceiling.

Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such a regimen; and how much more this poor old nervous victim?
It has been said that when she was in health and good spirits, this venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire, but when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate old sinner.
Sick-bed homilies and pious reflections are, to be sure, out of place in mere story-books, and we are not going (after the fashion of some novelists of the present day) to cajole the public into a sermon, when it is only a comedy that the reader pays his money to witness.

But, without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal repentances sometimes overcome him.

Recollection of the best ordained banquets will scarcely cheer sick epicures.