Lucius Davoren, Volume II by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

It was nearly dusk that evening when Lucius returned to Cedar House. His daily round had occupied more time than usual, and however full his mind might be of that strange old man, or of the woman he loved, he did not shorten a visit or neglect the smallest detail of his duty. The lamp was lighted in Mr. Sivewright's room, though it was not yet dark outside-only the sultry dusk of a late summer day. The day had been oppressive, and the Shadrack district had a prostrate air in its parched dustiness, like a camel in the desert panting for distant waterpools. The low leaden sky had threatened a storm since noon, and the denizens of the Shadrack-road, more especially the feminine population, had been so fluttered and disturbed by the expectation of the coming tempest as to be unable, in their own language, ‘to set to anything,' all day long. Work at the washtub had progressed slowly, wringing had hung on hand, and the very mangles of Shadrack had turned listlessly under the influence of the weather. It was the cholera season, too-a period which set in as regularly in this district as the gambling season or the water-drinking season at Homburg or Baden, or the bathing season at Ostend or Biarritz. Stone-fruit was selling cheaply on the hawkers' barrows, cucumbers were at a discount, vegetable marrows met with no inquiry, conger eel and mackerel were unpopular, and even salmon was not a stranger to the barrows. All the wealth of the vanishing summer-luxuries which a few short weeks ago had been counted amongst the delicacies of the season, and paid for accordingly-had drifted this way on the strong tide of time, and lay as it were at the feet of the Shadrackites. Upon which the Shadrackites, looking askant at the costermongers' barrows, remarked that cholera was about.

Mr. Davoren found his patient seated before a writing-table, which he had never until now seen opened. It was that kind of writing-table which is called a _bonheur du jour_, a small table provided with numerous drawers; an ebony table, inlaid with brass and tortoiseshell, with brass mounts; a table which, according to Mr. Sivewright, had been made by no lesser hands than those of Francis Boule. The lamp stood on this table, all the drawers were open and brimming over with papers, and before it, wrapped in his ancient dressing-gown of faded damask, sat the old man.