I greatly regret that the second time I enter this venerable dwelling, should be on an occasion as melancholy as this, on which I am now summoned.

How is your respectable--how is Sir Wycherly Wychecombe, I wish to say ?" There was sufficient in this answer, taken in connection with the deliberate, guarded, and yet expressive manner of the speaker to make Tom extremely uncomfortable, though there was also sufficient to leave him in doubts as to his namesake's true meaning.

The words emphasized by the latter, were touched lightly, though distinctly; and the cold, artificial smile with which they were uttered, completely baffled the sagacity of a rogue, as common-place as the heir-expectant.

Then the sudden change in the construction of the last sentence, and the substitution of the name of the person mentioned, for the degree of affinity in which he was supposed to stand to Tom, might be merely a rigid observance of the best tone of society, or it might be equivocal.
All these little distinctions gleamed across the mind of Tom Wychecombe; but that was not the moment to pursue the investigation.

Courtesy required that he should make an immediate answer, which he succeeded in doing steadily enough as to general appearances, though his sagacious and practised questioner perceived that his words had not failed of producing the impression he intended; for he had looked to their establishing a species of authority over the young man.
"My honoured and beloved uncle has revived a little, they tell me," said Tom; "but I fear these appearances are delusive.