te, could not tempt him from the path of
loyalty!

Now what was he? He had blushed at her seeing him in such company. Yet
it was his daily company.

He hung over the boat in moody silence.

And from that hour another phase of his misery began; and grew upon him.

Some wretched fools try to drown care in drink.

The fumes of intoxication vanish; the inevitable care remains, and must
be faced at last--with an aching head, disordered stomach, and spirits
artificially depressed.

Gerard's conduct had been of a piece with these maniacs'. To survive
his terrible blow he needed all his forces; his virtue, his health, his
habits of labour, and the calm sleep that is labour's satellite; above
all, his piety.

Yet all these balms to wounded hearts he flung away and trusted to moral
intoxication.

Its brief fumes fled; the bereaved heart lay still heavy as lead within
his bosom; but now the dark vulture Remorse sat upon it rending it.

Broken health; means wasted; innocence fled; Margaret parted from him by
another gulf wider than the grave! The hot fit of despair passed away.

The cold fit of despair came on.

Then this miserable young man spurned his gay companions, and all the
world.

He wandered alone. He drank wine alone to stupefy himself; and paralyze
a moment the dark foes to man that preyed upon his soul. He wandered
alone amidst the temples of old Rome, and lay stony eyed, woebegone,
among their ruins, worse wrecked than they.

Last of all came the climax, to which solitude, that gloomy yet
fascinating foe of minds diseased, pushes the hopeless.

He wandered alone at night by dark streams, and eyed them, and
eyed them, with decreasing repugnance. There glided peace; perhaps
annihilation.

What else was left him?

These dark spells have been broken by kind words, by loving and cheerful
voices.

The humblest friend the afflicted one possesses may speak, or look, or
smile, a sunbeam between him and that worst madness Gerard now brooded.

Where was Teresa? Where his hearty, kind old landlady?

They would see with their homely but swift intelligence; they would see
and save.

No; they knew not where he was, or whither he was gliding.

And is there no mortal eye upon the poor wretch, and the dark road he is
going?

Yes; one eye there is upon him; watching his every movement; following
him abroad; tracking him home.

And that eye is the eye of an enemy.

An enemy to the death.

CHAPTER LXI