half clung to
her husband; then on again, and passed through the open gates amid loud
cheers. She alighted in her own hall, and walked, nodding and smiling
sunnily, through two files of domestics and retainers; and thought no
more of Richard Bassett than some bright bird that has flown over a
rattlesnake and glanced down at him.

But a gorgeous bird cannot always be flying. A snake can sometimes
creep under her perch, and glare, and keep hissing, till she shudders
and droops and lays her plumage in the dust.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERALLY deliberate crimes are followed by some great punishment; but
they are also often attended in their course by briefer
chastisements--single strokes from the whip that holds the round dozen
in reserve. These precursors of the grand expiation are sharp but
kindly lashes, for they tend to whip the man out of the wrong road.

Such a stroke fell on Richard Bassett: he saw Bella Bruce sweep past
him, clinging to her husband, and shuddering at himself. For this,
then, he had plotted and intrigued and written an anonymous letter. The
only woman he had ever loved at all went past him with a look of
aversion, and was his enemy's wife, and would soon be the mother of
that enemy's children, and blot him forever out of the coveted
inheritance.

The man crept home, and sat by his little fireside, crushed. Indeed,
from that hour he disappeared, and drank his bitter cup alone.

After a while it transpired in the village that he was very ill. The
clergyman went to visit him, but was not admitted. The only person who
got to see him was his friend Wheeler, a small but sharp attorney, by
whose advice he acted in country matters. This Wheeler was very fond of
shooting, and could not get a crack at a pheasant except on Highmore;
and that was a bond between him and its proprietor. It was Wheeler who
had first told Bassett not to despair of possessing the estates, since
they had inserted Sir Charles's heir at law in the entail.

This Wheeler found him now so shrunk in body, so pale and haggard in
face, and dejected in mind, that he was really shocked, and asked leave
to send a doctor from a neighboring town.

"What to do?" said Richard, moodily. "It's my mind; it's not my body.
Ah, Wheeler, it is all over. I and mine shall never have Huntercombe
now."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Wheeler, almost angrily, "you will
have six feet by two of it before long if you go on this way. Was ever
such