Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own snoring; and, as is usual in such cases, sat apoplectically staring at vacancy, as defying vacancy to accuse him of having been asleep.
“Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, harder than ever.
“I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and I have been following you.”
“In discharge of a trust, I have handed Mr. Edwin Drood a ring of diamonds and rubies. You see?”
Edwin reproduced the little case, and opened it; and Bazzard looked into it.
“I follow you both, sir,” returned Bazzard, “and I witness the transaction.”
Evidently anxious to get away and be alone, Edwin Drood now resumed his outer clothing, muttering something about time and appointments. The fog was reported no clearer (by the flying waiter, who alighted from a speculative flight in the coffee interest), but he went out into it; and Bazzard, after his manner, “followed” him.
Mr. Grewgious, left alone, walked softly and slowly to and fro, for an hour and more. He was restless tonight, and seemed dispirited.
“I hope I have done right,” he said. “The appeal to him seemed necessary. It was hard to lose the ring, and yet it must have gone from me very soon.”
He closed the empty little drawer with a sigh, and shut and locked the escritoire, and came back to the solitary fireside.
“Her ring,” he went on. “Will it come back to me? My mind hangs about her ring very uneasily tonight. But that is explainable. I have had it so long, and I have prized it so much! I wonder—”