“Are you ill, my boy?” said Hippias.  “Where’s your colour?”

He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow would drive fast.

“I hate slow motion after being in the railway,” he said.

Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.

“Nothing, uncle! nothing!” said Richard, looking fiercely candid.

They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—­the struggle of life and death in him—­grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river.  And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old sweet music reviving through his frame, and the charm of his passion filing him afresh.  Still was fair Lucy the one woman to Richard.  He had forbidden her name but from an instinct of self-defence.  Must the maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in Lucy’s shape.  Thinking of her now so near him—­his darling! all her graces, her sweetness, her truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew her true—­swam in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions pathetic, and full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now elated it.  As well might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this young man the violent emotion that began to rage in his breast.  “I shall not see her!” he said to himself exultingly, and at the same instant thought, how black was every corner of the earth but that one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly cheerless the place he was going to!  Then he determined to bear it; to live in darkness; there was a refuge in the idea of a voluntary martyrdom.  “For if I chose I could see her—­this day within an hour!—­I could see her, and touch her hand, and, oh, heaven!—­But I do not choose.”  And a great wave swelled through him, and was crushed down only to swell again more stormily.

Then Tom Bakewell’s words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this Babylon alone.  And flying from point to point, it struck him that they had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out of the way—­they had been miserably plotting against him once more.  “They shall see what right they have to fear me.  I’ll shame them!” was the first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go, and see her safe, and calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed not to be one of the conspirators.  Nevertheless, after forming that resolve, he sat still, as if there were something fatal in the wheels that bore him away from it—­perhaps