It seems but the other day that a last illness seized upon his father, and now it is his turn: but several years have elapsed since then.

Mr.Verner is not sixty, and he thinks that age is young for the disorder that has fastened on him.
It is no hurried disorder; he may live for years yet; but the end, when it does come, will be tolerably sudden: and that he knows.

It is water on the chest.

He is a little man with light eyes; very much like what his father was before him: but not in the least like his late brother Sir Lionel, who was a very fine and handsome man.

He has a mild, pleasing countenance: but there arises a slight scowl to his brow as he turns hastily round at a noisy interruption.
Some one had burst into the room--forgetting, probably, that it was the quiet room of an invalid.