To the dinner they marched.

Of this great festival be it simply told that the supply was copious and of good quality—­much too good and copious for a bankrupt host:  that Evan and Mr. John Raikes were formally introduced to Old Tom before the repast commenced, and welcomed some three minutes after he had decided the flavour of his first glass; that Mr. Raikes in due time preferred his petition for release from a dreadful engagement, and furnished vast amusement to the company under Old Tom’s hand, until, by chance, he quoted a scrap of Latin, at which the brothers Cogglesby, who would have faced peers and princes without being disconcerted, or performing mental genuflexions, shut their mouths and looked injured, unhappy, and in the presence of a superior:  Mr. Raikes not being the man to spare them.  Moreover, a surprise was afforded to Evan.  Andrew stated to Old Tom that the hospitality of Main Street, Lymport,—­was open to him.  Strange to say, Old Tom accepted it on the spot, observing, ’You’re master of the house—­can do what you like, if you ‘re man enough,’ and adding that he thanked him, and would come in a day or two.  The case of Mr. Raikes was still left uncertain, for as the bottle circulated, he exhibited such a faculty for apt, but to the brothers, totally incomprehensible quotation, that they fled from him without leaving him time to remember what special calamity was on his mind, or whether this earth was other than an abode conceived in great jollity for his life-long entertainment.

CHAPTER XLII

JULIANA

The sick night-light burned steadily in Juliana’s chamber.  On a couch, beside her bed, Caroline lay sleeping, tired with a long watch.  Two sentences had been passed on Juliana:  one on her heart:  one on her body:  ‘Thou art not loved’; and, ‘Thou must die.’  The frail passion of her struggle against her destiny was over with her.  Quiet as that quiet which Nature was taking her to, her body reposed.  Calm as the solitary night-light before her open eyes, her spirit was wasting away.  ’If I am not loved, then let me die!’ In such a sense she bowed to her fate.

At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks back to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk there.  It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are destitute of the saving gift of conscience.  They have it, and it is perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore, they are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it.  Hence, their self-delusion is deep and endures.  They march to their object, and gaining or losing it, the voice that calls to them is the voice of a blind creature, whom any answer, provided that the answer is ready, will silence.  And at an hour like this, when finally they snatch their minute of