ho
recalled him, but don't think too meanly of Tommy. It was not that he
yielded to one of those fierce desires to lift the gauntlet; he had
got rid of them in fair fight when her letter reached him, forwarded
from Thrums. "Did you really think your manuscript was lost?" it said.
That was what took Tommy back. Grizel did not know the reason; he gave
her another. He thought very little about her that day. He thought
still less about Lady Pippinworth. How could he think of anything but
it? She had it, evidently she had it; she must have stolen it from his
bag. He could not even spare time to denounce her. It was alive--his
manuscript was alive, and every moment brought him nearer to it. He
was a miser, and soon his hands would be deep among the gold. He was a
mother whose son, mourned for dead, is knocking at the door. He was a
swain, and his beloved's arms were outstretched to him. Who said that
Tommy could not love?

The ecstasies that came over him and would not let him sit still made
Grizel wonder. "Is it a book?" she asked; and he said it was a
book--such a book, Grizel! When he started for the castle next
morning, she thought he wanted to be alone to think of the book. "Of
it and you," he said; and having started, he came back to kiss her
again; he never forgot to have an impulse to do that. But all the way
to the Spittal it was of his book he thought, it was his book he was
kissing. His heart sang within him, and the songs were sonnets to his
beloved. To be worthy of his beautiful manuscript--he prayed for that
as lovers do; that his love should be his, his alone, was as wondrous
to him as to any of them.

But we are not noticing what proved to be the chief thing. Though
there was some sun, the air was shrewd, and he was wearing the old
doctor's coat. Should you have taken it with you, Tommy? It loved
Grizel, for it was a bit of him; and what, think you, would the old
doctor have cared for your manuscript had he known that you were gone
out to meet that woman? It was cruel, no, not cruel, but thoughtless,
to wear the old doctor's coat.

He found no one at the Spittal. The men were out shooting, and the
ladies had followed to lunch with them on the moors. He came upon
them, a gay party, in the hollow of a hill where was a spring suddenly
converted into a wine-cellar; and soon the men, if not the ladies,
were surprised to find that Tommy could be the gayest of them all. He
was in hilarious spirits, and had a gall