The lady’s hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime.  They turned their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the scene.  The next moment he had galloped away.

CHAPTER XIV

All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter, and his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and the great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer.  Months he had wandered about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering, sighing, knocking at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer.  He had the key now.  His own father had given it to him.  His heart was a lightning steed, and bore him on and on over limitless regions bathed in superhuman beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers and ladies leaned whispering upon close green swards, and knights and ladies cast a splendour upon savage forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in golden courts lit to a glorious day by ladies’ eyes, one pair of which, dimly visioned, constantly distinguishable, followed him through the boskage and dwelt upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above a hand glittering white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night.

Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock:  he was in the act of consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small white hand.  Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth:  to fling the Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it off!  He was intoxicated by anticipation.  For that he was born.  There was, then, some end in existence, something to live for! to kiss a woman’s hand, and die!  He would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to relieve his swarming sensations.  Scarce was he seated when the pen was dashed aside, the paper sent flying with the exclamation, “Have I not sworn I would never write again?” Sir Austin had shut that safety-valve.  The nonsense that was in the youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its urgency for ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly oblivious of his oath, and found himself seated under the lamp in the act of composition before pride could speak a word.  Possibly the pride even of Richard Feverel had been swamped if the act of composition were easy at such a time, and a single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads were demanding the first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of stormy billows, pressed impetuously for expression, and despair of reducing them to form, quite as much as pride, to which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw down the powerless pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length and another headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.

Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went forth into the air.  A lamp was still burning in his father’s room, and Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on the watch.  Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold against the hues of dawn.