I made sure that before I should have done with him there would scarcely be a current form of words left me to be sick of; but meanwhile I could make surer still of my animosity to bustling ladies for whom he drew the water that irrigated their social flower-beds.
I had a battle with Mrs.Wimbush over the artist she protected, and another over the question of a certain week, at the end of July, that Mr.
Paraday appeared to have contracted to spend with her in the country.

I protested against this visit; I intimated that he was too unwell for hospitality without a nuance, for caresses without imagination; I begged he might rather take the time in some restorative way.

A sultry air of promises, of ponderous parties, hung over his August, and he would greatly profit by the interval of rest.

He hadn't told me he was ill again that he had had a warning; but I hadn't needed this, for I found his reticence his worst symptom.

The only thing he said to me was that he believed a comfortable attack of something or other would set him up: it would put out of the question everything but the exemptions he prized.
I'm afraid I shall have presented him as a martyr in a very small cause if I fail to explain that he surrendered himself much more liberally than I surrendered him.