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His may not have been a very dignified way of life; it was too full of affectations for that; particularly after he began to be greatly influenced by the rather sickly æsthetic movement then in vogue in London. But it was, at least, a harmless life; and, upon the whole, a generous and kindly one.
He had just entered the court from the great gate, when he heard all at once the hard peculiar twitter of alarm which sparrows make when a cat or a hawk invades their safety, rising all round from the thick ivy that overclimbed the wall on his left, and raising his eyes listlessly, he saw, with a sort of shock, a thin, ungainly man, standing with his legs crossed, in the recess of the window from which the light was wont to issue, leaning with his elbows on the stone mullion, and looking down with a sort of sickly sneer, his hollow yellow cheeks being deeply stained on one side with what is called a "claret-mark."
Now Madame Violante had been wedded, in the flower of her youth, to an Advocate of the Parlement, a man of a harsh temper and sorely set on the arraignment and punishing of unfortunate prisoners. For the rest, he was of sickly habit and a weakling, of such a sort he seemed more fit to give pain to folks outside his doors than pleasure to his wife within.
In fact, I had regarded that passion, even in my earlier youth, with a certain superb contempt, as a malady engendered by an effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sickly imagination. I wished to find in a wife a rational companion, an affectionate and trustworthy friend. No views of matrimony could be less romantic, more soberly sensible, than those which I conceived.
It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent gradually down and every heart went with him everybody, too, for that matter and blood and breath stood still.
But at the same time he was conscious of a sinking sensation. "Yes, it is," said Archer; "it's coming right for us." "Maybe they're just rowing across," said Tom. Archer watched the boat intently. "It's coming herre all right," he said; "we'rre pinched. Let's get inside, anyway." Tom smiled with a kind of sickly resignation. "Let's see," he said; "yes, you're right, they've got uniforms, too.
Many of these useful little animals were sickly, owing to the marches in the hot sun, which had created intense thirst. Upon arrival at streams upon the route, they had drunk too greedily, and some had died of inflammation. "The natives purchased live goats at the rate of about 30 lbs. of flour. This was an equal exchange in live weight of the animal; a pound of flour for a pound of goat.
Miserable food, ill-timed and greedily eaten, had played havoc with bone and muscle. They were all pale, flabby, sunken-eyed, hollow-chested, with eyes that glinted and shone and lips that were a sickly red by contrast. Their hair was but half attended to, their ears anaemic in hue, and their shoes broken in leather and run down at heel and toe.
In a word, the beautiful writer of the fatal note was honestly romantic, according to the romance of 1848, and of good society; of course she was not affected by hair tumbling back or plastered down forward, and a rolling eye went no further with her than a squinting one. Her romance was stern, not sickly.
I objected the indecency of encroaching on his life, and the danger of provoking him by such an unseasonable demand. Lucius seemed not to think decency of much importance, but admitted the danger of displeasing, and concluded that as he was now old and sickly, we might without any in convenience, wait for his death.
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