But Lomaque breathes uneasily, as if still oppressed by the sultry midday heat; and there are signs of perplexity and trouble in his face as he looks down absently now and then into the street.
The times he lives in are enough of themselves to sadden any man's face.
In the Reign of Terror no living being in all the city of Paris can rise in the morning and be certain of escaping the spy, the denunciation, the arrest, or the guillotine, before night.

Such times are trying enough to oppress any man's spirits; but Lomaque is not thinking of them or caring for them now.

Out of a mass of papers which lie before him on his old writing-table, he has just taken up and read one, which has carried his thoughts back to the past, and to the changes which have taken place since he stood alone on the doorstep of Trudaine's house, pondering on what might happen.
More rapidly even than he had foreboded those changes had occurred.
In less time even than he had anticipated, the sad emergency for which Rose's brother had prepared, as for a barely possible calamity, overtook Trudaine, and called for all the patience, the courage, the self-sacrifice which he had to give for his sister's sake.

By slow gradations downward, from bad to worse, her husband's character manifested itself less and less disguisedly almost day by day.
Occasional slights, ending in habitual neglect; careless estrangement, turning to cool enmity; small insults, which ripened evilly to great injuries--these were the pitiless signs which showed her that she had risked all and lost all while still a young woman--these were the unmerited afflictions which found her helpless, and would have left her helpless, but for the ever-present comfort and support of her brother's self-denying love.

From the first, Trudaine had devoted himself to meet such trials as now assailed him; and like a man he met them, in defiance alike of persecution from the mother and of insult from the son.
The hard task was only lightened when, as time advanced, public trouble began to mingle itself with private grief.