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"You had better be quiet now, my dear fellow, after your dose; talking will only excite you. Settle yourself on my bed, and I'll be back in an hour." Campbell had been there already; so Tom took care to tell nothing which he had not told, expecting, and rightly, that he would not mention Elsley's having fired at him.
Can he be going up the Glyder?" "We'll see that in five minutes. All in the day's work, my boy. I could go up Mont Blanc with such a dinner in me." The two gallant men run in, struggle into their wet boots again, and provisioned with meat and bread, whiskey, tobacco, and plaids, are away upon Elsley's tracks, having left Mrs.
They are at the door of Elsley's lodgings now. Tom Thurnall meets them there, and bows them upstairs silently. Lucia is so weak that she has to cling to the banister a moment; and then, with a strong shudder, the spirit conquers the flesh, and she hurries up before them both.
When Campbell spoke in that way, Valencia was good at once; and as she went obediently to the microscope, she whispered, "Don't be angry with me, mon Saint Père." "Don't be naughty, then, ma chère enfant" whispered he; for he saw something about Elsley's face which gave him a painful suspicion. She looked long, and then lifted up her head suddenly "Do come and look, Mr.
Not merely by all which a husband has a right to feel in such a case, or fancies that he has a right; not merely by tortured vanity and self-conceit, by the agony of seeing any man preferred to him, which to a man of Elsley's character was of itself unbearable; not merely by the loss of trust in one whom he hail once trusted utterly: but, over and above all, and worst of all, by the feeling of shame, self-reproach, self-hatred, which haunts a jealous man, and which ought to haunt him; for few men lose the love of women who have once loved them, save by their own folly or baseness: by the recollection that he had traded on her trust; that he had drugged his own conscience with the fancy that she must love him always, let him do what he would; and had neglected and insulted her affection, because he fancied, in his conceit, that it was inalienable.
Elsley was standing before the empty fireplace, his hand in his bosom, as if he had been startled by the scuffle outside. He had not shaved for some days. So much Tom could note; but no more. He saw the glance of recognition pass over Elsley's face, and that an ugly one. He saw him draw something from his bosom, and spring like a cat almost upon the table. A flash a crack.
"Miserable ass!" thought Tom, "if he don't see innocence in that man's countenance, he wouldn't see it in his own child's." Elsley suddenly turned his back to them, and thrust his hand into his bosom. Now was Tom's turn. In a moment he had vaulted over the table, and seized Elsley's wrist, ere he could draw the second pistol. "No, my dear Jack," whispered he quietly, "once is enough in a day!"
The evening passed off at first as uncomfortably as it could, where three out of the four were well-bred people. Elsley was, of course, shy before Lord Scoutbush, and Scoutbush was equally shy before Elsley, though as civil as possible to him; for the little fellow stood in extreme awe of Elsley's talents, and was afraid of opening his lips before a poet.
His weakness, now that the collapse after passion had come on, clung to any human friend. The very sound of Tom's clear sturdy voice seemed pleasant to him, after long solitude and silence. At least it kept off the fiends of memory. Tom, anxious to keep Elsley's mind employed on some subject which should not be painful, began chatting about the war and its prospects.
And what use might not the Major make of his secret? Besides, Elsley's dread and suspicion increased rapidly when he discovered that Campbell was one of those men who live on terms of peculiar intimacy with many women; whether for his own good or not, still for the good of the women concerned.
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