started,--she rose,--voices; one strange to
her,--a man's voice,--then the Mayor's. A third voice,--shrill, stern;
a terrible voice,-heard in infancy, associated with images of cruelty,
misery, woe. It could not be! impossible! Near, nearer, came the
footsteps. Seized with the impulse of flight, she sprang to the mouth
of the arbour. Fronting her glared two dark, baleful eyes. She
stood,--arrested, spellbound, as a bird fixed rigid by the gaze of a
serpent.

"Yes, Mr. Mayor; all right! it is our little girl,--our dear Sophy. This
way, Mr. Losely. Such a pleasant surprise for you, Sophy, my love!" said
Mrs. Crane.

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

In the kindliest natures there is a certain sensitiveness, which,
when wounded, occasions the same pain, and bequeaths the same
resentment, as mortified vanity or galled self-love.

It is exactly that day week, towards the hour of five in the evening,
Mr. Hartopp, alone in the parlour behind his warehouse, is locking up
his books and ledgers preparatory to the return to his villa. There is
a certain change in the expression of his countenance since we saw
it last. If it be possible for Mr. Hartopp to look sullen,--sullen he
looks; if it be possible for the Mayor of Gatesboro' to be crestfallen,
crestfallen he is. That smooth existence has surely received some fatal
concussion, and has not yet recovered the shock. But if you will glance
beyond the parlour at Mr. Williams giving orders in the warehouse, at
the warehousemen themselves, at the rough faces in the tan-yard,-nay, at
Mike Callaghan, who has just brought a parcel from the railway, all of
them have evidently shared in the effects of the concussion; all of them
wear a look more or less sullen; all seem crestfallen. Could you carry
your gaze farther on, could you peep into the shops in the High Street,
or at the loungers in the city reading-room; could you extend the vision
farther still,--to Mr. Hartopp's villa, behold his wife, his
little ones, his men-servants, and his maid-servants, more and more
impressively general would become the tokens of disturbance occasioned
by that infamous concussion. Everywhere a sullen look,--everywhere that
ineffable aspect of crestfallenness! What can have happened? is the good
man bankrupt? No, rich as ever! What can it be? Reader! that fatal event
which they who love Josiah Hartopp are ever at watch to prevent, despite
all their vigilance, has occurred! Josiah Hartopp h