s,
determined that he would risk everything. If it were ordained that
prudence should prevail, the prudence should be hers. Why should he
take upon himself to have prudence enough for two, seeing that she
was so very discreet in all her bearings? Then he remembered the
touch of her hand, which he still felt upon his palm as he sat
handling his pipe, and he told himself that after that he was bound
to say a word more. And moreover he confessed to himself that he was
compelled by a feeling that mastered him altogether. He could not get
through an hour's work without throwing down his pen and thinking of
Nora Rowley. It was his destiny to love her,--and there was, to his
mind, a mean, pettifogging secrecy, amounting almost to daily lying,
in his thus loving her and not telling her that he loved her. It
might well be that she should rebuke him; but he thought that he
could bear that. It might well be that he had altogether mistaken
that touch of her hand. After all it had been the slightest possible
motion of no more than one finger. But he would at any rate know the
truth. If she would tell him at once that she did not care for him,
he thought that he could get over it; but life was not worth having
while he lived in this shifty, dubious, and uncomfortable state. So
he made up his mind that he would go to St. Diddulph's with his heart
in his hand.

In the mean time, Mr. Bozzle had been twice to St. Diddulph's;--and
now he made a third journey there, two days after Stanbury's visit.
Trevelyan, who, in truth, hated the sight of the man, and who
suffered agonies in his presence, had, nevertheless, taught himself
to believe that he could not live without his assistance. That it
should be so was a part of the cruelty of his lot. Who else was there
that he could trust? His wife had renewed her intimacy with Colonel
Osborne the moment that she had left him. Mrs. Stanbury, who had been
represented to him as the most correct of matrons, had at once been
false to him and to her trust, in allowing Colonel Osborne to enter
her house. Mr. and Mrs. Outhouse, with whom his wife had now located
herself, not by his orders, were, of course, his enemies. His old
friend, Hugh Stanbury, had gone over to the other side, and had
quarrelled with him purposely, with malice prepense, because he would
not submit himself to the caprices of the wife who had injured him.
His own lawyer had refused to act for him; and his fast and oldest
ally, the ver