utshell.

To their surprise and amusement, they now learned that the hated "spy"
who had prowled round their folds and fields so long, would resign to
Mistress Bevan the house in which they sat, and that atonement made,
vanish into thin air--_a vox et preterea nihil!_ being in reality the
Proteus-like, mysterious, handsome, though sallow stranger, and no
stranger, sitting among them!

We said that Mr Fitzarthur's conduct in espousing this long-unseen
mistress of his fancy, was not quite so extraordinary and wild as it
appeared. For coming back grown into maturity, and altered by climate in
complexion and all characteristics, he found himself quite unrecognised,
and conceived the idea of at once reconnoitring his dilapidated estate,
and watching the conduct of his long-remembered Winifred. _Two_
disguises seemed necessary toward these two purposes, and he adopted the
two we have seen, one on the "hither side Tivy," the other on the "far
side Tivy," which his coracle allowed him to cross at pleasure. His
close watch of the blameless girl's whole life confirmed the warm and
romantic wishes of his soul, which her beauty inspired--that beauty as
fully confirming the vision of his love-dream when far and long away.

It was during the alarm of her prolonged fainting, produced by the
surprise of this discovery, and the previous agitations, (whereby,
perhaps, the prudence rather than the affection of the eccentric lover
was impeached,) that her mother, searching her pocket for a bottle of
volatile salts, turned forth the letter lately referred to, melancholy
evidence of the desperate extremity to which two powerful antagonist
passions--love, and filial love--had driven a mind not unfortified by
religion, but beleaguered by despair and all its powers, till resolution
failed, and peril impended over an otherwise almost spotless soul.

As the old man's affections were not wholly weaned from Llaneol, ruinous
as it was, his son-in-law had it restored as a temporary summer
residence for the old people, as well as occasionally for himself and
his beloved bride.

It hardly needs to be told, that the arrest and its executors were but
parts of the delusion, the amount of real infliction being no more than
a ride in a fine morning of some miles. Whether the whole, as involving
some little added trouble of mind to that whose whole weight he was
going so soon to remove, was too severe a penance for the steward's
neglect, may be variousl