ered, under the renewed conviction
that his father's death-bed warning was now, in event after event,
asserting its terrible claim to part him, at any sacrifice, from the one
human creature whom he loved--with the fear still busy at his heart that
the first mysterious vision of Allan's Dream might be a vision realized,
before the new day that now saw the two Armadales together was a day
that had passed over their heads--with these triple bonds, wrought by
his own superstition, fettering him at that moment as they had never
fettered him yet, he mercilessly spurred his resolution to the desperate
effort of rivaling, in Allan's presence, the gayety and good spirits of
Allan himself.

He talked and laughed, and heaped his plate indiscriminately from every
dish on the breakfast-table. He made noisily merry with jests that had
no humor, and stories that had no point. He first astonished Allan, then
amused him, then won his easily encouraged confidence on the subject
of Miss Milroy. He shouted with laughter over the sudden development of
Allan's views on marriage, until the servants downstairs began to think
that their master's strange friend had gone mad. Lastly, he had accepted
Allan's proposal that he should be presented to the major's daughter,
and judge of her for himself, as readily, nay, more readily than it
would have been accepted by the least diffident man living. There the
two now stood at the cottage gate--Midwinter's voice rising louder and
louder over Allan's--Midwinter's natural manner disguised (how madly
and miserably none but he knew!) in a coarse masquerade of boldness--the
outrageous, the unendurable boldness of a shy man.

They were received in the parlor by the major's daughter, pending the
arrival of the major himself.

Allan attempted to present his friend in the usual form. To his
astonishment, Midwinter took the words flippantly out of his lips, and
introduced himself to Miss Milroy with a confident look, a hard laugh,
and a clumsy assumption of ease which presented him at his worst.
His artificial spirits, lashed continuously into higher and higher
effervescence since the morning, were now mounting hysterically beyond
his own control. He looked and spoke with that terrible freedom of
license which is the necessary consequence, when a diffident man has
thrown off his reserve, of the very effort by which he has broken loose
from his own restraints. He involved himself in a confused medley of
apologi