But to each nature of all the millions beneath his sway, Love comes in a fitting guise, to some as an angel messenger, telling of sympathy and peace, and a strange new hope; to others draped in sad robes indeed, but still divine.  Thus when he visits such a one as George Caresfoot, it is as a potent fiend, whose mission is to enter through man’s lower nature, to torture and destroy; to scorch the heart with fearful heats, and then to crush it, and leave its owner’s bosom choked with bitter dust.

And, so far as George is concerned, there is no doubt but what the work was done right well, for under the influence of what is, with doubtful propriety, known as the “tender passion,” that estimable character was rapidly drifting within a measurable distance of a lunatic asylum.  The checks and repulses that he had met with, instead of cooling his ardour, had only the effect of inflaming it to an extraordinary degree.  Angela’s scornful dislike, as water thrown upon burning oil, did but diffuse the flames of his passion throughout the whole system of his mind, till he grew wild with its heat and violence.  Her glorious beauty daily took a still stronger hold upon his imagination, till it scorched into his very soul.  For whole nights he could not sleep, for whole days he would scarcely eat or do anything but walk, walk, walk, and try to devise means to win her to his side.  The irritation of the mind produced its natural effects upon his conduct, and he would burst into fits of the most causeless fury.  In one of these he dismissed every servant in the house, and so evil was his reputation among that class, that he had great difficulty in obtaining others to take their place.  In another he hurled a heavy pot containing an azalea-bush at the head of one of the gardeners, and had to compromise an action for assault.  In short, the lunatic asylum loomed very near indeed.

For a week or so after the memorable night of his interview with Philip, an interview that he, at least, would never forget, George was quite unable, try as he would, to get a single word with Angela.

At last, one day, when he was driving, by a seldom-used road, past the fields near the Abbey House on his way from Roxham, chance gave him the opportunity that he had for so long sought without success.  For, far up a by-lane that led to a turnip-field, his eye caught sight of the flutter of a grey dress vanishing round a corner, something in the make of which suggested to him that Angela was its wearer.  Giving the reins to the servant, and bidding him drive on home, he got out of the dog-cart and hurried up the grassy track, and on turning the corner came suddenly upon the object of his search.  She was standing on the bank of the hedge-row, and struggling with a bough of honeysuckle from which she wished to pluck its last remaining autumn bloom.  So engaged was she that she did not hear his step, and it was not until his hard voice grated on her ear, that she knew that she was trapped.