g quick.

Her wish to be free of him was his anguish. In his pain he thought
sincerely. When the pain was easier he muffled himself in the idea of
her jealousy of Laetitia Dale, and deemed the wish a fiction. But she
had expressed it. That was the wound he sought to comfort; for the
double reason, that he could love her better after punishing her, and
that to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing her--the dread
abyss she had succeeded in forcing his nature to shudder at as a giddy
edge possibly near, in spite of his arts of self-defence.

"What I shall do to-morrow evening!" he exclaimed. "I do not care to
fling a bottle to Colonel De Craye and Vernon. I cannot open one for
myself. To sit with the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me. When
do you bring me back my bride, sir?"

"My dear Willoughby!" The Rev. Doctor puffed, composed himself, and
sipped. "The expedition is an absurdity. I am unable to see the aim of
it. She had a headache, vapours. They are over, and she will show a
return of good sense. I have ever maintained that nonsense is not to be
encouraged in girls. I can put my foot on it. My arrangements are for
staying here a further ten days, in the terms of your hospitable
invitation. And I stay."

"I applaud your resolution, sir. Will you prove firm?"

"I am never false to my engagement, Willoughby."

"Not under pressure?"

"Under no pressure."

"Persuasion, I should have said."

"Certainly not. The weakness is in the yielding, either to persuasion
or to pressure. The latter brings weight to bear on us; the former
blows at our want of it."

"You gratify me, Doctor Middleton, and relieve me."

"I cordially dislike a breach in good habits, Willoughby. But I do
remember--was I wrong?--informing Clara that you appeared light-hearted
in regard to a departure, or gap in a visit, that was not, I must
confess, to my liking."

"Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was my pleasure; but make my
pleasure yours, and you remain to crack many a bottle with your
son-in-law."

"Excellently said. You have a courtly speech, Willoughby. I can imagine
you to conduct a lovers' quarrel with a politeness to read a lesson to
well-bred damsels. Aha?"

"Spare me the futility of the quarrel."

"All's well?"

"Clara," replied Sir Willoughby, in dramatic epigram, "is perfection."

"I rejoice," the Rev. Doctor responded; taught thus to understand that
the lovers' quarrel between his daughter and his ho