best, as I have done my worst."

He rose hastily, and rang the bell. Harry eyed him like some attached
creature that sympathizes with but can not comprehend its master.

The waiter entered.

"I shall not go by the train," said Richard; "let a carriage and pair be
brought round instantly, without a moment's delay."

The waiter hurried out to execute the order.

"But you will surely return home, Richard, after what has happened?"
said Harry, thinking of his mother's funeral.

"The dead can wait," returned he, solemnly. "Go you back to town. In
three days' time, if you do not hear from me, come down to Gethin with
Charles and Agnes."

"But I dare not, unless my husband send for me."

"He _will_ send for you," said Richard, solemnly; "or others will in his
behalf."

Without one word or sign of farewell he suddenly rushed by her, and was
gone. A carriage stood at the front-door of the hotel, which had just
returned from taking a bride and bridegroom to the railway station, and
she saw him hurry into it.

"Fast! fast!" she heard him cry, through the open window; and then he
was whirled away.

CHAPTER XLVI.

CURTIUS.

Richard had many subjects for thought to beguile his lonely way to
Gethin, but one was paramount, and absorbed the rest, though he strove
to dismiss it all he could.

He endeavored to think of his dead mother. His heart was full of her
patient love and weary, childless life; but her portrait faded from his
mind like a dissolving view, and in its place stood that of Solomon Coe,
haggard, emaciated, hideous. Still less could he think of Harry and her
son, between whom and himself this spectre of the unhappy man rose up at
once, summoned by the thought of them, as by a spell. It did not occur
to Richard even now that he had had no right to kill him; but he
shuddered to think, if he had really done so, how this late opening
flower of love which he had just discovered would blossom into fear and
loathing. In that case his heart would have been softened only to be
pierced. His mother's death, the knowledge of Harry's fidelity, and of
the existence of his son, to whom his affection had been already drawn,
unknowingly and in spite of himself, had dissolved his cruel purpose. He
was eager to spare his mother's memory the shame of the foul crime he
had contemplated, and passionately anxious that in the veins of his
new-found son there should at least run no murderer's blood.

"Faster! faster!"