This view of Lord Forestfield's character was tolerably correct. So soon as he had 'turned the corner,' as he phrased it--so soon as he had recovered his appetite, and convalescence had once set in--his progress towards recovery was wonderfully rapid. Soon he began to take carriage airings; and as in passing through the streets he recognised his friends, and again looked upon the vast panorama of London life, from which he had been so long excluded, the good impulses which had recently sprung up within him died away, and the old desires were as rampant as ever. It was lucky, he thought, that in his weakness he had a sufficient excuse for going but seldom into his wife's sick-room. He would look in there in the morning when he first got up, and in the evening before he went to bed--for his health was not yet sufficiently reestablished to allow him to keep late hours, or in any way to play tricks with himself--and, if May were awake, he would say a few words to her; if her eyes were closed, as was generally the case, he would content himself with a nod to the nurse and disappear. On the sixth day of his wife's illness Lord Forestfield met Dr. Whitaker coming down the stairs with a very solemn face, and, taking him aside, asked him his impression of the result. There is probably no man without some spice of good in him; and with all his snobbishness and garrulity, Dr. Whitaker had a sincere affection, based partly on regard, partly on the advantageous use which he had been enabled to make of the three thousand pounds which she brought him as her marriage portion, for his own wife. He was greatly disgusted at what he rightly conceived to be Lord Forestfield's motive in making this inquiry, and referred his lordship to Divine Providence with much greater asperity than he was accustomed to use in dealing with persons of title. One morning the nurse waited upon Lord Forestfield with a message from May to beg that Sir Nugent Uffington might be sent for to see her, as she had one or two important matters on which she wished to communicate with him. Forestfield made no immediate reply; and the woman, noticing his heavy frown and the angry flush which spread over his face, said: 'I don't think, if I was you, my lord, I would deny her anything, poor lamb. She has had a dreadful night--scarcely a minute's sleep from first to last--and there's no doubt she's sinking.' 'Do you think so, nurse?' asked Forestfield, with all the colour fading from his face. 'Do you think she is going from us?' 'If she continues losing strength as fast as she has done during the last twenty-four hours, she can't be alive to-morrow morning,' said the woman; 'and it would be a sad thought for you afterwards, my lord, to think you had acted in any way contrary to the poor dear.'