's Cottage, but had heard of Miss Marjoribanks,
who it was not to be supposed could hold a very absolute sway over
the doctor. Meanwhile Dr Rider struggled with his horse with all the
intensity of determination with which he would have struggled against
his fate had that been practicable. With set teeth and eyes that blazed
with sudden rage and resolution, he subdued the unruly brute, and forced
it to acknowledge his mastery. When he drove the vanquished animal, all
quivering with pain and passion, on its further course, the struggle had
refreshed his mind a little. Ah, if life and adverse fortune could but
be vanquished so!--but all Edward Rider's resolution and courage died
into hopeless disgust before the recollection of Mrs Fred upon that
sofa. Even with Nettie at one hand, that peevish phantom on the other,
those heartless imps in insolent possession of the wonderful little
guardian who would not forsake them, made up a picture which made the
doctor's heart sick. No! Nettie was right. It was impossible. Love,
patience, charity, after all, are but human qualities, when they have to
be held against daily disgusts, irritations, and miseries. The doctor
knew as well as Nettie did that he could not bear it. He knew even, as
perhaps Nettie did not know, that her own image would suffer from the
association; and that a man so faulty and imperfect as himself could not
long refrain from resenting upon his wife the dismal restraints of such
a burden. With a self-disgust which was most cutting of all, Edward
Rider felt that he should descend to that injustice; and that not even
Nettie herself would be safe against the effusions of his impatience
and indignation. All through the course of this exciting episode in his
life, his own foresight and knowledge of himself had been torture to the
doctor, and had brought him, in addition to all other trials, silent
agonies of self-contempt which nobody could guess. But he could not alter
his nature. He went through his day's work very wretched and dejected,
yet with an ineffable touch of secret comfort behind all, which sometimes
would look him in the face for a moment like a passing sunbeam, yet
sometimes seemed to exasperate beyond bearing the tantalising misery of
his fate. A more agitated, disturbed, passionate, and self-consuming man
than the doctor was not in Carlingford, nor within a hundred miles; yet
it was not perfect wretchedness after all.

Nettie, on her part, went back to M