ain
of him. Perhaps, thought he, maddened into wild suspicion by the sense
of his own wrong-doing, she might complain of him; she might combine
with Thurnall against him--for what purpose he knew not: but the
wildest imaginations flashed across him, as he hurried desperately
home, intending as soon as he got there to forbid Lucia's ever calling
in his dreaded enemy. No, Thurnall should never cross his door again!
On that one point he was determined, but on nothing else.

However, his intention was never fulfilled. For long before he reached
home he began to feel himself thoroughly ill. His was a temperament
upon which mental anxiety acts rapidly and severely; and the burning
sun, and his rapid walk, combined with rage and terror to give him
such a "turn" that, as he hurried down the lane, he found himself
reeling like a drunken man. He had just time to hurry through the
garden, and into his study, when pulse and sense failed him, and he
rolled over on the sofa in a dead faint.

Lucia had seen him come in, and heard him fall, and rushed in. The
poor little thing was at her wits' end, and thought that he had had
nothing less than a _coup-de-soleil._ And when he recovered from his
faintness, he began to be so horribly ill, that Clara, who had been
called in to help, had some grounds for the degrading hypothesis (for
which Lucia all but boxed her ears) that "Master had got away into the
woods, and gone eating toadstools, or some such poisonous stuff;" for
he lay a full half-hour on the sofa, death-cold, and almost pulseless;
moaning, shuddering, hiding his face in his hands, and refusing
cordials, medicines, and, above all, a doctor's visit.

However, this could not be allowed to last. Without Elsley's
knowledge, a messenger was despatched for Thurnall, and luckily met
him in the lane; for he was returning to the town in the footsteps of
his victim.

Elsley's horror was complete, when the door opened, and Lucia brought
in none other than his tormentor.

"My dearest Elsley, I have sent for Mr. Thurnall. I knew you would not
let me, if I told you; but you see I have done it, and now you must
really speak to him."

Elsley's first impulse was to motion them both away angrily; but the
thought that he was in Thurnall's power stopped him. He must not show
his disgust. What if Lucia were to ask its cause, even to guess it?
for to his fears even that seemed possible. A fresh misery! Just
because he shrank so intensely from t