THE SILVER CORD.
BY SHIRLEY BROOKS.
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CHAPTER XCVI.
Two days passed, and Ernest Adair received no summons from the person to whom he had been directed to announce his arrival in England. This time he passed at the lodging he had taken, seldom venturing out, except to procure himself some of the minor luxuries to which one who has long resided on the Continent is accustomed, and which do not enter into the coarse calculations of a lodging-house keeper. A little fruit on his breakfast-table, a box of sardines, even a few flowers, were among the humble requirements of Adair, and his two-pennyworth of roses was arranged with as careful an attention to their grouping, as if the hand that set them out had been that of an innocent girl who varied her task with a song. Adair, too, varied his task with songs, but they were not such as a girl should sing, or hear. Their meaning, however, was, of course, lost upon the rest of the household, and the foreign gentleman was supposed to be rehearsing for his theatrical duties. He gave little trouble, smoked incessantly, and occupied himself with newspapers, which he bought in large numbers, and searched for paragraphs of foreign news, the nature of which, happily for the peace of those with whom he sojourned, came not within their homely imaginations. But he searched in vain.
A third day passed, and the monotony of Ernest’s existence suddenly began to press upon him with a dead weight. Those who have lived a life of business, or of irritating excitement, have their moments of repose, when a species of almost defiant pleasure is found in the interval of stagnant inaction. But such persons, under such circumstances, not infrequently arouse to a feverish and despairing sensation, when the stillness of this life becomes intolerable, and even at the risk of destroying arranged schemes, or of running upon foreseen perils, they must do something to