her palace! while he loved and ministered to her
outward dream-shape which flitted before the eyes of his sense, in the
hope that at last the Idea would awake, and come forth and inform
it!--he dared not follow the thought! it was madness and suicide! He
had been silently worshiping an angel with wings not yet matured to the
spreading of themselves to the winds of truth; those wings were a
little maimed, and he had been tending them with precious balms, and
odors, and ointments: all at once she had turned into a bat, a
skin-winged creature that flies by night, and had disappeared in the
darkness! Of all possible mockeries, for _her_ to steal out at night to
the embraces of a fool! a wretched, weak-headed, idle fellow, whom
every clown called by his Christian name! an ass that did nothing but
ride the country on a horse too good for him, and quarrel with his
mother from Sunday to Saturday! For such a man she had left him,
Godfrey Wardour! a man who would have lifted her to the height of her
nature! whereas the fool Helmer would sink her to the depth of his own
merest nothingness! The thing was inconceivable! yet it was! He knew
it; they were all the same! Never woman worthy of true man! The poorest
show would take them captive, would draw them from reason!

He knew _now_ that he loved the girl. Gnashing his teeth with fellest
rage, he caught from the wall his heaviest hunting-whip, rushed
heedless past his mother where she waited on the landing, and out of
the house.

In common with many, he thought worse of Tom Helmer than he yet
deserved. He was a characterless fool, a trifler, a poetic babbler, a
good-for-nothing good sort of fellow; that was the worst that as yet
was true of him; and better things might with equal truth have been
said of him, had there been any one that loved him enough to know them.

Godfrey ran to the stable, and to the stall of his fastest horse. As he
threw the saddle over his back, he almost wept in the midst of his
passion at the sight of the bright stirrups. His hands trembled so that
he failed repeatedly in passing the straps through the buckles of the
girths. But the moment he felt the horse under him, he was stronger,
set his head straight for the village of Warrender, where Tom's mother
lived, and went away over everything. His crow-flight led him across
the back of the house of Durnmelling. Hesper, who had not slept well,
and found the early morning even a worse time to live in than the