Only now, when I wake up from
it, I'm a crawling wretch at her feet. If I had her feet to kiss! I've
never kissed her--never! And no man has kissed her. Damn my head! here's
the ache coming on. That's my last oath, mother. I wish there was a Bible
handy, but I'll try and stick to it without. My God! when I think of her,
I fancy everything on earth hangs still and doubts what's to happen. I'm
like a wheel, and go on spinning. Feel my pulse now. Why is it I can't
stop it? But there she is, and I could crack up this old world to know
what's coming. I was mild as milk all those days I was near her. My
comfort is, she don't know me. And that's my curse too! If she did, she'd
know as clear as day I'm her mate, her match, the man for her. I am, by
heaven!--that's an oath permitted. To see the very soul I want, and to
miss her! I'm down here, mother; she loves her sister, and I must learn
where her sister's to be found. One of those gentlemen up at Fairly's the
guilty man. I don't say which; perhaps I don't know. But oh, what a lot
of lightnings I see in the back of my head!"

Robert fell back on the pillow. Mrs. Boulby wiped her eyes. Her feelings
were overwhelmed with mournful devotion to the passionate young man; and
she expressed them practically: "A rump-steak would never digest in his
poor stomach!"

He seemed to be of that opinion too, for when, after lying till eleven,
he rose and appeared at the breakfast-table, he ate nothing but crumbs of
dry bread. It was curious to see his precise attention to the neatness of
his hat and coat, and the nervous eye he cast upon the clock, while
brushing and accurately fixing these garments. The hat would not sit as
he was accustomed to have it, owing to the bruise on his head, and he
stood like a woman petulant with her milliner before the glass; now
pressing the hat down till the pain was insufferable, and again trying
whether it presented him acceptably in the enforced style of his wearing
it. He persisted in this, till Mrs. Boulby's exclamation of wonder
admonished him of the ideas received by other eyes than his own. When we
appear most incongruous, we are often exposing the key to our characters;
and how much his vanity, wounded by Rhoda, had to do with his proceedings
down at Warbeach, it were unfair to measure just yet, lest his finer
qualities be cast into shade, but to what degree it affected him will be
seen.

Mrs. Boulby's persuasions induced him to take a stout silver-