“Could you not wait until after breakfast?” and Godfrey forced himself into a sitting posture.  “I was out late last night, and drank too much wine.  I feel confoundedly stupid, and the uproar that you have been making for the last hour at the door has given me an awful headache.  But what is the matter with you, Tony?  You look like a spectre.  Are you ill? or have you, like me, been too long over your cups?”

“You know I never drink, Godfrey, nor have I any bodily ailment; but in truth my mind is ill at ease.  I am sick at heart, and you, you, cousin, are the cause of my present sufferings.”

“Ah! the old love story.  You repent of giving up Juliet, and want me to release you from your promise.  I am not such a romantic fool!  I never give up an advantage once gained, and am as miserly of opportunities as your father is of his cash.  But speak out Anthony,” he continued, seeing his cousin turn pale, “I should like to hear what dreadful charge you have to bring against me.”

“You shall hear, Godfrey, if I have strength and courage to tell you.”  Anthony sat down on an easy chair by the side of the bed, and after a long pause, in which he tried to compose his agitated feelings, he informed his cousin of the conversation that he had overheard between Mary and her brother, and what had subsequently happened.  Godfrey listened with intense interest until he came to that part of the narrative where Mary, in her wandering mood, had confounded him with Anthony; and there, at the very circumstance which had occasioned his cousin such acute anguish, and when he expected from him the deepest sympathy, how were his feelings shocked as, throwing himself back upon his pillow, Godfrey burst into a loud fit of laughter, exclaiming in a jocular and triumphant tone, “By Jove, Anthony, but you are an unlucky dog!”

This was too much for the excited state of mind under which Anthony had been laboring for some hours, and with a stifled groan he fell across the bed in a fit.  Godfrey alarmed in his turn, checked his indecent mirth, and dressing himself as quickly as he could, roused up his valet to run for the surgeon.  The fresh air and the loss of a little blood soon restored the unfortunate young man to his senses and to a deep consciousness of his cousin’s ungentlemanly and base conduct.

Instead of being sorry for this unfortunate mistake, Godfrey secretly congratulated himself upon his singular good fortune, and laughed at the strange accident that had miraculously transferred the shame of his own guilt to his cousin.

“This will destroy for ever what little influence he possessed with Juliet, and will close the Captain’s doors against him.  If I do not improve my present advantage, may I die a poor dependent upon the bounty of a Hurdlestone!”

Again he laughed, and strode onward to the Lodge, humming a gay tune, and talking and whistling alternately to his dog.

He found Miss Dorothy and her niece at work; the latter as pale as marble, the tears still lingering in the long dark lashes that veiled her sad and downcast eyes.  The Captain was rocking to and fro in an easy chair, smoking his pipe and glancing first towards his daughter, and then at her starch prim-looking aunt, with no very complaisant expression.