Mrs. Channing shook her head only, by way of answer; and, as Mr. Huntley scrutinized her pale, sad countenance, he began to think there must be greater mystery about the affair than he had supposed. He said no more. On the third day he quitted Borcette, having seen them, as he expressed it, fully installed, and pursued his route homewards, by way of Lille, Calais, and Dover. Mr. Huntley was no friend to long sea passages: people with well-filled purses seldom are so. CHAPTER XXXII. -- AN OMINOUS COUGH. “I say, Jenkins, how you cough!” “Yes, sir, I do. It’s a sign that autumn’s coming on. I have been pretty free from it all the summer. I think the few days I lay in bed through that fall, must have done good to my chest; for, since then, I have hardly coughed at all. This last day or two it has been bad again.” “What cough do you call it?” went on Roland Yorke--you may have guessed he was the speaker. “A churchyard cough?” “Well, I don’t know, sir,” said Jenkins. “It _has_ been called that, before now. I dare say it will be the end of me at last.” “Cool!” remarked Roland. “Cooler than I should be, if I had a cough, or any plague of the sort, that was likely to be _my_ end. Does it trouble your mind, Jenkins?” “No, sir, not exactly. It gives me rather down-hearted thoughts now and then, till I remember that everything is sure to be ordered for the best.” “The best! Should you call it for ‘the best’ if you were to go off?” demanded Roland, drawing pen-and-ink chimneys upon his blotting-paper, with clouds of smoke coming out, as he sat lazily at his desk. “I dare say, sir, if that were to happen, I should be enabled to see that it was for the best. There’s no doubt of it.” “According to that theory, everything that happens must be for the best. You may as well say that pitching on to your head and half killing yourself, was for the best. Moonshine, Jenkins!” “I think even that accident was sent for some wise purpose, sir. I know, in some respects, it was very palpably for the best. It afforded me some days of quiet, serious reflection, and it served to show how considerate everybody was for me.” “And the pain?” “That was soon over, sir. It made me think of that better place where there will be no pain. If I am to be called there early, Mr. Roland, it is well that my thoughts should be led to it.” Roland stared with all his eyes. “I say, Jenkins, what do you mean? You have nothing serious the matter with you?” “No, sir; nothing but the cough, and a weakness that I feel. My mother and brother both died of the same thing, sir.” “Oh, nonsense!” returned Roland. “Because one’s mother dies, is that any reason why we should fall into low spirits and take up the notion that we are going to die, and look out for it? I am surprised at you, Jenkins.”