Lucius Davoren, Volume I by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The fever raged severely. Delirium held Geoffrey's brain in its hideous thraldom. Horrid sights and scenes pursued him. He looked at his friend's face with blank unseeing eyes, or looked and beheld something that was not there-the countenance of an enemy.

Lucius felt himself now between two fires-disease on one side, famine on the other. Between these two devastators death seemed inevitable. Absalom Schanck, sorely wasted from his native plumpness, sat by the hearth and watched the struggle, resigned to the idea of his own approaching end.