when his eye
wandered thirstily again to the flask on the middle of the table, and
with a sardonic, flushed smile, he quoted the 'Good Angel's' words:--

'O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside,
And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul.'

And then pouring out a dram, he looked on it, and said, with the 'Evil
Angel'--

'Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art,
Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained:
Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
Lord and commander of the elements.'

And then, with a solitary sneer, he sipped it. And after awhile he drank
one glass more--they were the small glasses then in vogue--and shoved it
back, with--

'There; that's the last.'

And then, perhaps, there was one other 'last;' and after that 'the
_very_ last.' Hang it! it _must_ be the last, and so on, I suppose. And
Devereux was pale, and looked wild and sulky on parade next morning.

CHAPTER LXIII.

IN WHICH A LIBERTY IS TAKEN WITH MR. NUTTER'S NAME, AND MR. DANGERFIELD
STANDS AT THE ALTAR.

Poor Mrs. Nutter continued in a state of distracted and flighty
tribulation, not knowing what to make of it, nor, indeed, knowing the
worst; for the neighbours did not tell her half they might, nor drop a
hint of the dreadful suspicion that dogged her absent helpmate.

She was sometimes up rummaging among the drawers, and fidgeting about
the house, without any clear purpose, but oftener lying on her bed, with
her clothes on, crying. When she got hold of a friend, she disburthened
her soul, and called on him or her for endless consolations and
assurances, which, for the most part, she herself prescribed. There
were, of course, fits of despair as well as starts of hope; and bright
ideas, accounting for everything, and then clouds of blackness, and
tornadoes of lamentation.

Father Roach, a good-natured apostle, whose digestion suffered when
anyone he liked was in trouble, paid her a visit; and being somehow
confounded with Dr. Toole, was shown up to her bed-room, where the poor
little woman lay crying under the coverlet. On discovering where he was,
the good father was disposed to flinch, and get down stairs, in
tenderness to his 'character,' and thinking what a story 'them villians
o' the world'id make iv it down at the club there.' But on second
thoughts, poor little Sally being neither young nor comely, he ventured,
and sat down by the bed, veiled behind a strip of curtain, and poured
his mellifluous consolatio