these to a French hotel would be a descent!--'this
the seat, this mournful gloom for that celestial light.' I am
perfectly at home in the library here. That excellent fellow Whitford
and I have real days: and I like him for showing fight to his elder and
better."

"He is going to leave."

"I know nothing of it, and I shall append no credit to the tale until I
do know. He is headstrong, but he answers to a rap."

Clara's bosom heaved. The speechless insurrection threatened her eyes.

A South-west shower lashed the window-panes and suggested to Dr.
Middleton shuddering visions of the Channel passage on board a steamer.

"Corney shall see you: he is a sparkling draught in person; probably
illiterate, if I may judge from one interruption of my discourse when
he sat opposite me, but lettered enough to respect Learning and write
out his prescription: I do not ask more of men or of physicians." Dr.
Middleton said this rising, glancing at the clock and at the back of
his hands. "'Quod autem secundum litteras difficillimum esse
artificium?' But what after letters is the more difficult practice?
'Ego puto medicum.' The medicus next to the scholar: though I have not
to my recollection required him next me, nor ever expected child of
mine to be crying for that milk. Daughter she is--of the unexplained
sex: we will send a messenger for Corney. Change, my dear, you will
speedily have, to satisfy the most craving of women, if Willoughby, as
I suppose, is in the neoteric fashion of spending a honeymoon on a
railway: apt image, exposition and perpetuation of the state of mania
conducting to the institution! In my time we lay by to brood on
happiness; we had no thought of chasing it over a continent, mistaking
hurly-burly clothed in dust for the divinity we sought. A smaller
generation sacrifices to excitement. Dust and hurly-burly must perforce
be the issue. And that is your modern world. Now, my dear, let us go
and wash our hands. Midday-bells expect immediate attention. They know
of no anteroom of assembly."

Clara stood gathered up, despairing at opportunity lost. He had noticed
her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked magisterially to
smother and overbear the something disagreeable prefigured in her
appearance.

"You do not despise your girl, father?"

"I do not; I could not; I love her; I love my girl. But you need not
sing to me like a gnat to propound that question, my dear."

"Then, father, tell Willoughby to