“My own marriage was to take place early in May. It was now April; and at one time there had been some talk of the two sisters being married on the same day. It was late in the month; I am not clear about the date, but I remember it was on a Sunday morning. I was sitting with him, and he lay propped up on a sofa, to enable him to take his breakfast with me. ‘I was thinking all last night, Vyner,’ said he--‘and nothing but a sick man’s selfishness could have prevented my thinking it long ago--how you must hate me.’ “‘Hate _you_, and why?’ “‘Because but for me and my misfortune you’d have been married by the sixth or seventh, and now, who knows how long you must wait?’ “I saw at once that the double marriage was running in his mind, and though my own was fixed for the following Thursday or Friday, I had not nerve to say so; nor was my embarrassment the less that Mr. Courtenay had charged me with the task of telling Luttrell that all should be considered as at an end, and every day used to question me if I had yet done so. “‘Now or never,’ thought I, as Luttrell said this; but when I turned and saw his wasted cheek, still pink with hectic, and his glassy, feverish eye, I shrunk again from the attempt. “‘Why did you look at me so pitifully, Vyner?’ said he, eagerly; ‘has the doctor told you that I shall not rub through?’ “‘Nothing of the kind, man; he says he’ll have you down at Hastings before a fortnight is over.’ “‘What was it, then? Do I look very fearfully?’ “‘Not even that. You are pulled down, of course. No man looks the better for eight or ten weeks on a sick-bed.’ “‘Then it is something else,’ said he, thoughtfully; and I made no answer. “‘Well,’ said he, with a deep sigh, ‘I have had my forebodings of--I don’t know what--but of something that was over me all this time back; and when I lay awake at night, wondering in what shape this disaster would come, I have ever consoled myself by saying, “Well, Vyner certainly does not know it; Vyner has no suspicion of it.” If now, however, I were to be wrong in this; if, in reality, Vyner _did_ know that a calamity impended me; and if’--here he fixed his bright staring eyes with their wide pupils full upon me--‘if Vyner knew something, and only forbore to break it to me because he saw me a poor sickly wasted creature, whose courage he doubted, all I can say is, he does not know the stuff the Luttrells are made of.’ “I tried to answer this, but all I could do was to take his hand and press it between my own. ‘Out with it, like a good fellow,’ cried he, with an effort to seem gay--‘out with it, and you’ll see whether I am too vain of my pluck!’