spiritual eye, that her mother was just in that state in
which some fearful and shameful fall is possible, perhaps wholesome.
"She would sell her soul for me? What if she have sold it, and stopped
short just now, because she had not the heart to tell me that love for
me had been the cause? Oh! if she have sinned for my sake! Wretch that
I am! Miserable myself, and bringing misery with me! Why was I ever
born? Why cannot I die--and the world be rid of me?"

No, she would not believe it. It was a wicked, horrible, temptation
of the devil. She would rather believe that she herself had been the
thief, tempted during her unconsciousness; that she had hidden it
somewhere; that she should recollect, confess, restore all some day.
She would carry it to him herself, grovel at his feet, and entreat
forgiveness. "He will surely forgive, when he finds that I was not
myself when--that it was not altogether my fault--not as if I had been
waking--yes, he will forgive!" And then on that thought followed a
dream of what might follow, so wild that a moment after she had hid
her blushes in her hands, and fled to books to escape from thoughts.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FIRST INSTALMENT OF AN OLD DEBT.

We must now return to Elsley, who had walked home in a state of mind
truly pitiable. He had been flattering his soul with the hope that
Thurnall did not know him; that his beard, and the change which years
had made, formed a sufficient disguise: but he could not conceal
from himself that the very same alterations had not prevented his
recognising Thurnall; and he had been living for two months past in
continual fear that that would come which now had come.

His rage and terror knew no bounds. Fancying Thurnall a merely mean
and self-interested worldling, untouched by those higher aspirations
which stood to him in place of a religion, he imagined him making
every possible use of his power; and longed to escape to the uttermost
ends of the earth from his old tormentor, whom the very sea would not
put out of the way, but must needs cast ashore at his very feet, to
plague him afresh.

What a net he had spread around his own feet, by one act of foolish
vanity! He had taken his present name, merely as a _nom de guerre_,
when first he came to London as a penniless and friendless scribbler.
It would hide him from the ridicule (and, as he fancied, spite) of
Thurnall, whom he dreaded meeting every time he walked London streets,
and who was for