y agitation was now so
overruling and engrossing that I lost even my intellectual sense of it;
and now first I understood practically and feelingly the anguish of hope
alternating with disappointment, as it may be supposed to act upon the
poor shipwrecked seaman, alone and upon a desolate coast, straining his
sight for ever to the fickle element which has betrayed him, but which
only can deliver him, and with his eyes still tracing in the far
distance

'Ships, dim-discover'd, dropping from the clouds,'--

which a brief interval of suspense still for ever disperses into hollow
pageants of air or vapour. One deception melted away only to be
succeeded by another; still I fancied that at last to a certainty I
could descry the tall figure of Agnes, her gipsy hat, and even the
peculiar elegance of her walk. Often I went so far as to laugh at
myself, and even to tax my recent fears with unmanliness and effeminacy,
on recollecting the audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous
palpitations which had besieged me; but these symptoms, whether
effeminate or not, began to come back tumultuously under the gloomy
doubts that succeeded almost before I had uttered this self-reproach.
Still I found myself mocked and deluded with false hopes; yet still I
renewed my quick walk, and the intensity of my watch for that radiant
form that was fated never more to be seen returning from the cruel city.

It was nearly half-past three, and therefore close upon two hours beyond
the time fixed by Agnes for her return, when I became absolutely
incapable of supporting the further torture of suspense, and I suddenly
took the resolution of returning home and concerting with my female
servants some energetic measures, though _what_ I could hardly say, on
behalf of their mistress. On entering the garden-gate I met our little
child Francis, who unconsciously inflicted a pang upon me which he
neither could have meditated nor have understood. I passed him at his
play, perhaps even unaware of his presence, but he recalled me to that
perception by crying aloud that he had just seen his mamma.

'When--where?' I asked convulsively.

'Up-stairs in her bedroom,' was his instantaneous answer.

His manner was such as forbade me to suppose that he could be joking;
and, as it was barely possible (though, for reasons well-known to me, in
the highest degree improbable), that Agnes might have returned by a
by-path, which, leading through a dangerous and dis