CHAPTER XL.
IN PURSUIT.
John Saltram improved daily at Hampton Court.

In spite of his fierce impatience to get well, in order to engage in the search for Marian--an impatience which was in itself sufficient to militate against his well-being--he did make considerable progress on the road to recovery.

He was still very weak, and it must take time to complete his restoration; but he was no longer the pale ghost of his former self that Gilbert had brought down to the quiet suburb.
It would have been a cruel thing to leave him much alone at such a time, or it would have seemed very cruel to Gilbert Fenton, who had ever present in his memory those old days in Egypt when this man had stood him in such good stead.

He remembered the days of his own sickness, and contrived to perform his business duties within the smallest time possible, and so spend the rest of his life in the comfortable sitting-rooms looking out upon Bushy-park on the one side, and on the other upon the pretty high road before the Palace grounds.
Nor was there any sign in the intercourse of those two that the bond of friendship between them was broken.

There was, it is true, a something deprecating in John Saltram's manner that had not been common to him of old, and in Gilbert Fenton a deeper gravity than was quite natural; but that was all.