enly checked and stimulated by
the sound of voices on the road. Voices, one of which was Nettie's, one
the lofty clerical accents of the Rev. Frank Wentworth. The two were
walking arm-in-arm in very confidential colloquy, as the startled and
jealous doctor imagined. What were these two figures doing together upon
the road? why did Nettie lean on the arm of that handsome young clerical
coxcomb? It did not occur to Dr Rider that the night was extremely dark,
and that Nettie had been at Miss Wodehouse's, where the curate of St
Roque's was a perpetual visitor. With a mortified and jealous pang,
totally unreasonable and totally irresistible, Edward Rider, only a moment
before so fantastically extreme in Nettie's defence--in the defence of
Nettie's very "image" from all vulgar contact and desecration--strode
past Nettie now without word or sign of recognition. She did not see
him, as he observed with a throbbing heart; she was talking to young Mr
Wentworth with all the haste and eagerness which Dr Rider had found so
captivating. She never suspected who it was that brushed past her with
breathless, exasperated impatience in the darkness. They went on past
him, talking, laughing lightly, under the veil of night, quite indifferent
as to who heard them, though the doctor did not think of that. He,
unreasonably affronted, galled, and mortified, turned his back upon that
house, which at this present disappointed moment did not contain one
single thing or person which he could dwell on with pleasure; and, a
hundred times more discontented, fatigued, and worn out--full of disgust
with things in general, and himself and his own fate in particular--than
he had been when he set out from the other end of Carlingford, went
sulkily, and at a terrific pace, past the long garden-walls of Grange
Lane, and all Dr Marjoribanks's genteel patients. When he had reached
home, he found a message waiting him from an urgent invalid whose "case"
kept the unhappy doctor up and busy for half the night. Such was the
manner in which Edward Rider got through the evening--the one wonderful
exceptional evening when Nettie went out to tea.

CHAPTER VII.

With the dawn of the morning, however, and the few hours' hurried
rest which Edward Rider was able to snatch after his labours, other
sentiments arose in his mind. It was quite necessary to see how the
unlucky child was at St Roque's Cottage, and perhaps what Nettie thought
of all that had occurred du