'
Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right hand, as
if at once to disarm apprehension and gain time to get better.
After a while he says faintly:
'I have been taking opium for a pain--an agony--that sometimes
overcomes me. The effects of the medicine steal over me like a
blight or a cloud, and pass. You see them in the act of passing;
they will be gone directly. Look away from me. They will go all
the sooner.'
With a scared face the younger man complies by casting his eyes
downward at the ashes on the hearth. Not relaxing his own gaze on
the fire, but rather strengthening it with a fierce, firm grip upon
his elbow-chair, the elder sits for a few moments rigid, and then,
with thick drops standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of his
breath, becomes as he was before. On his so subsiding in his
chair, his nephew gently and assiduously tends him while he quite
recovers. When Jasper is restored, he lays a tender hand upon his
nephew's shoulder, and, in a tone of voice less troubled than the
purport of his words--indeed with something of raillery or banter
in it--thus addresses him:
'There is said to be a hidden skeleton in every house; but you
thought there was none in mine, dear Ned.'
'Upon my life, Jack, I did think so. However, when I come to
consider that even in Pussy's house--if she had one--and in mine--
if I had one--'
'You were going to say (but that I interrupted you in spite of
myself) what a quiet life mine is.
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