is morning and am gone for
a ride."

He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our
yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it
be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some
resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against
tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages
of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting
seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on
country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he
should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting
on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the
scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion,
the loss of Adam's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which
suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as
a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid
even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of
danger.

Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as
easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses
and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to
witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the
giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an
old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse,
not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that
sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife
out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same
Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits.
If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself
against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the
time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment,
Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that
Adam's happiness was involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had
been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or
any other deeds, could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for
him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only have executed them without
hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Adam,
and would never have been weary