grew from hour to hour, and she dreaded lest strength to endure might wholly forsake her before night came.  She tried to picture her father returning as usual; human pity might have spoken even in Dagworthy’s heart; or if not so, then he might have been induced to forbear by a hope of winning her gratitude.  Very agony made her feel almost capable of rewarding such mercy.  For Wilfrid seemed now very far away, and her love had fallen to the background; it was not the supreme motive of her being as hitherto.  Would she suffer thus for Wilfrid?  The question forced itself upon her, and for reply she shuddered; such bonds seemed artificial compared with those which linked her to her father, the love which was coeval with her life.  All feeling is so relative to circumstances, and what makes so stable as the cement of habit?

In the early hours of the afternoon a lull of utter weariness relieved her; she lay upon the couch and all but slept; it was something between sleep and loss of consciousness following on excessive pain.  She awoke to find the doctor bending over her; Mrs. Hood had become so alarmed that she had despatched a neighbour secretly on the errand.  Emily was passive, and by her way of speaking half disguised the worst features of her state.  Nevertheless, the order was given that she should go to bed.  She promised to obey.

‘As soon as father comes,’ she said, when alone again with her mother.  ‘It cannot be long till his time.’

She would not yield beyond this.  But the hour of return came, and her father delayed.  Then was every minute an eternity.  No longer able to keep her reclining position, she stood again by the window, and her eyes lost their vision from straining upon one spot, that at which Hood would first appear.  She leaned her head upon the window-sill, and let her ears take their turn of watching; the first touch of a hand at the gate would reach her.  But there came none.

Can hours thus be lived through?  Ah, which of us to whom time has not been a torment of hell?  Is there no nether Circle, where dread anticipation eternally prolongs itself, eternally varied with hope in vain for ever?

Mrs. Hood had abandoned her useless protests; she came and sat by the girl.

‘I’ve no doubt he’s gone to the Walkers’,’ she kept saying, naming acquaintances with whom Hood occasionally spent an evening.  Then, ’And why need you wait for him, my dear?  Can’t he go up and see you as soon as he gets in?’

‘Mother,’ Emily said at last, ‘will you go to the Walkers’ and ask?  It is not really very far.  Will you go?’

But, my child, it will take me at least an hour to walk there and back!  I should only miss him on the way.  Are you afraid of something?

‘Yes, I am.  I believe something has happened to him.’

’Those are your fancies.  You are very poorly; it is cruel to me to refuse to go to bed.’

‘Will you go, mother?—­If you do not, I must; ill or not, I must go.’