CHAPTER XVIII.
A REINFORCEMENT Throughout January, Barfoot was endeavouring to persuade his brother Tom to leave London, where the invalid's health perceptibly grew worse.
Doctors were urgent to the same end, but ineffectually; for Mrs.
Thomas, though she professed to be amazed at her husband's folly in remaining where he could not hope for recovery, herself refused to accompany him any whither.

This pair had no children.

The lady always spoke of herself as a sad sufferer from mysterious infirmities, and had, in fact, a tendency to hysteria, which confused itself inextricably with the results of evil nurture and the impulses of a disposition originally base; nevertheless she made a figure in a certain sphere of vulgar wealth, and even gave opportunity to scandalous tongues.

Her husband, whatever his secret thought, would hear nothing against her; his temper, like Everard's, was marked with stubbornness, and after a good deal of wrangling he forbade his brother to address him again on the subject of their disagreement.
'Tom is dying,' wrote Everard, early in February, to his cousin in Queen's Road.

'Dr.Swain assures me that unless he be removed he cannot last more than a month or two.