Having felt latterly a return of that fulness and oppression
of the head, against which my doctor warned me so seriously more
than two years since, I resolved to take the opportunity of
getting a little extra exercise by sending my bag on before me and
walking to the terminus in Euston Square. As I came out into
Holborn a gentleman walking by rapidly stopped and spoke to me.
It was Mr. Walter Hartright.
If he had not been the first to greet me I should certainly have
passed him. He was so changed that I hardly knew him again. His
face looked pale and haggard--his manner was hurried and
uncertain--and his dress, which I remembered as neat and
gentleman-like when I saw him at Limmeridge, was so slovenly now
that I should really have been ashamed of the appearance of it on
one of my own clerks.
"Have you been long back from Cumberland?" he asked. "I heard
from Miss Halcombe lately. I am aware that Sir Percival Glyde's
explanation has been considered satisfactory. Will the marriage
take place soon? Do you happen to know Mr. Gilmore?"
He spoke so fast, and crowded his questions together so strangely
and confusedly, that I could hardly follow him. However
accidentally intimate he might have been with the family at
Limmeridge, I could not see that he had any right to expect
information on their private affairs, and I determined to drop
him, as easily as might be, on the subject of Miss Fairlie's
marriage.
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