through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and
hating the chain to which you cling--in that hour pray--pray as if
the devil had you by the throat,--to Almighty God, to help you out
of that cursed slough! There is nothing else for it!--pray, I tell
you!'

There was a terrible earnestness about the guardsman's face which
could not be mistaken. Lancelot looked at him for a moment, and
then dropped his eyes ashamed, as if he had intruded on the
speaker's confidence by witnessing his emotion.

In a moment the colonel had returned to his smile and his polish.

'And now, my dear invalid, I must beg your pardon for sermonising.
What do you say to a game of ecarte? We must play for love, or we
shall excite ourselves, and scandalise Mrs. Lavington's piety.' And
the colonel pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket, and seeing
that Lancelot was too thoughtful for play, commenced all manner of
juggler's tricks, and chuckled over them like any schoolboy.

'Happy man!' thought Lancelot, 'to have the strength of will which
can thrust its thoughts away once and for all.' No, Lancelot! more
happy are they whom God will not allow to thrust their thoughts from
them till the bitter draught has done its work.

From that day, however, there was a cordial understanding between
the two. They never alluded to the subject; but they had known the
bottom of each other's heart. Lancelot's sick-room was now pleasant
enough, and he drank in daily his new friend's perpetual stream of
anecdote, till March and hunting were past, and April was half over.
The old squire came up after dinner regularly (during March he had
hunted every day, and slept every evening); and the trio chatted
along merrily enough, by the help of whist and backgammon, upon the
surface of this little island of life,--which is, like Sinbad's,
after all only the back of a floating whale, ready to dive at any
moment.--And then?--

But what was Argemone doing all this time? Argemone was busy in her
boudoir (too often a true boudoir to her) among books and
statuettes, and dried flowers, fancying herself, and not unfairly,
very intellectual. She had four new manias every year; her last
winter's one had been that bottle-and-squirt mania, miscalled
chemistry; her spring madness was for the Greek drama. She had
devoured Schlegel's lectures, and thought them divine; and now she
was hard at work on Sophocles, with a little help f