tender cherishing epithet’s of love in the nest.  She was there—­she moved somewhere about like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her sweet household duties.  His blood began to sing:  O happy those within, to see her, and be about her!  By some extraordinary process he contrived to cast a sort of glory round the burly person of Farmer Blaize himself.  And oh! to have companionship with a seraph one must know a seraph’s bliss, and was not young Tom to be envied?  The smell of late clematis brought on the wind enwrapped him, and went to his brain, and threw a light over the old red-brick house, for he remembered where it grew, and the winter rose-tree, and the jessamine, and the passion-flower:  the garden in front with the standard roses tended by her hands; the long wall to the left striped by the branches of the cherry, the peep of a further garden through the wall, and then the orchard, and the fields beyond—­the happy circle of her dwelling! it flashed before his eyes while he looked on the darkness.  And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled this light and inspired the momentary calm he experienced:  it was despair exaggerating delusion, wilfully building up on a groundless basis.  “For the tenacity of true passion is terrible,” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip:  “it will stand against the hosts of heaven, God’s great array of Facts, rather than surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will succumb—­sent to the lowest pit!” He knew she was not there; she was gone.  But the power of a will strained to madness fought at it, kept it down, conjured forth her ghost, and would have it as he dictated.  Poor youth! the great array of facts was in due order of march.

He had breathed her name many times, and once over-loud; almost a cry for her escaped him.  He had not noticed the opening of a door and the noise of a foot along the gravel walk.  He was leaning over Cassandra’s uneasy neck watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed him out of the darkness.

“Be that you, young gentleman?—­Mr. Fev’rel?”

Richard’s trance was broken.  “Mr. Blaize!” he said; recognizing the farmer’s voice.

“Good even’n t’ you, sir,” returned the farmer.  “I knew the mare though I didn’t know you.  Rather bluff to-night it be.  Will ye step in, Mr. Fev’rel? it’s beginning’ to spit,—­going to be a wildish night, I reckon.”

Richard dismounted.  The farmer called one of his men to hold the mare, and ushered the young man in.  Once there, Richard’s conjurations ceased.  There was a deadness about the rooms and passages that told of her absence.  The walls he touched—­these were the vacant shells of her.  He had never been in the house since he knew her, and now what strange sweetness, and what pangs!

Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in open-mouthed examination of an ancient book of the fashions for a summer month which had elapsed during his mother’s minority.  Young Tom was respectfully studying the aspects of the radiant beauties of the polite work.  He also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and full of wonder.