nd reproached
herself for having flung away such a treasure.

It was gone indeed. William had spent it all out. He loved her no
more, he thought, as he had loved her. He never could again. That sort
of regard, which he had proffered to her for so many faithful years,
can't be flung down and shattered and mended so as to show no scars.
The little heedless tyrant had so destroyed it. No, William thought
again and again, "It was myself I deluded and persisted in cajoling;
had she been worthy of the love I gave her, she would have returned it
long ago. It was a fond mistake. Isn't the whole course of life made
up of such? And suppose I had won her, should I not have been
disenchanted the day after my victory? Why pine, or be ashamed of my
defeat?" The more he thought of this long passage of his life, the more
clearly he saw his deception. "I'll go into harness again," he said,
"and do my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased Heaven to
place me. I will see that the buttons of the recruits are properly
bright and that the sergeants make no mistakes in their accounts. I
will dine at mess and listen to the Scotch surgeon telling his stories.
When I am old and broken, I will go on half-pay, and my old sisters
shall scold me. I have geliebt und gelebet, as the girl in
'Wallenstein' says. I am done. Pay the bills and get me a cigar:
find out what there is at the play to-night, Francis; to-morrow we
cross by the Batavier." He made the above speech, whereof Francis only
heard the last two lines, pacing up and down the Boompjes at Rotterdam.
The Batavier was lying in the basin. He could see the place on the
quarter-deck where he and Emmy had sat on the happy voyage out. What
had that little Mrs. Crawley to say to him? Psha; to-morrow we will put
to sea, and return to England, home, and duty!

After June all the little Court Society of Pumpernickel used to
separate, according to the German plan, and make for a hundred
watering-places, where they drank at the wells, rode upon donkeys,
gambled at the redoutes if they had money and a mind, rushed with
hundreds of their kind to gourmandise at the tables d'hote, and idled
away the summer. The English diplomatists went off to Teoplitz and
Kissingen, their French rivals shut up their chancellerie and whisked
away to their darling Boulevard de Gand. The Transparent reigning
family took too to the waters, or retired to their hunting lodges.
Everybody went away hav