at it must have given him a sense of stability and safety.

At any rate that he put on the suit is quite certain.

Probably it was a work of ingratiation and degrees; a feeling of the
silk, a trying on to one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it. O
you Revolutionists! who would have no state, no ceremonial, and but one
order of galligaskins! This man must have been wooed away in spirit to
forgetfulness of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a bigger
and a farther leap; he must have obtained from the contemplation of
himself in his suit that which would be the saving of all men, in
especial of his countrymen--imagination, namely.

Certain it is, as I have said, that he attired himself in the suit. He
covered it with his dressing-gown, and he lay down on his bed so garbed,
to await the morrow's light, being probably surprised by sleep acting
upon fatigue and nerves appeased and soothed.

CHAPTER XII

Elba lay more sheltered from South-east winds under the slopes of down
than any other house in Crikswich. The South-caster struck off the cliff
to a martello tower and the house on the beach, leaving Elba to repose,
so that the worst wind for that coast was one of the most comfortable for
the owner of the hall, and he looked from his upper window on a sea of
crumbling grey chalk, lashed unremittingly by the featureless piping
gale, without fear that his elevated grounds and walls would be open at
high tide to the ravage of water. Van Diemen had no idea of calamity
being at work on land when he sat down to breakfast. He told Herbert that
he had prayed for poor fellows at sea last night. Mary Fellingham and
Annette were anxious to finish breakfast and mount the down to gaze on
the sea, and receiving a caution from Van Diemen not to go too near the
cliff, they were inclined to think he was needlessly timorous on their
account.

Before they were half way through the meal, word was brought in of great
breaches in the shingle, and water covering the common. Van Diemen sent
for his head gardener, whose report of the state of things outside took
the comprehensive form of prophecy; he predicted the fall of the town.

"Nonsense; what do you mean, John Scott?" said Van Diemen, eyeing his
orderly breakfast table and the man in turns. "It does n't seem like
that, yet, does it?"

"The house on the beach won't stand an hour longer, sir."

"Who says so?"

"It's cut off from land now, and waves mast-high all a