PHIPPS. I trust the shades will be to your liking, madam. They are the most becoming we have. They are the same as his lordship uses himself when he is dressing for dinner.

MRS. CHEVELEY. [With a smile.] Then I am sure they will be perfectly right.

PHIPPS. [Gravely.] Thank you, madam.

[MRS. CHEVELEY goes into the drawing-room. PHIPPS closes the door and retires. The door is then slowly opened, and MRS. CHEVELEY comes out and creeps stealthily towards the writing-table. Suddenly voices are heard from the smoking-room. MRS. CHEVELEY grows pale, and stops. The voices grow louder, and she goes back into the drawing-room, biting her lip.]

Early the next day, a note from Isabella, speaking peace and tenderness in every line, and entreating the immediate presence of her friend on a matter of the utmost importance, hastened Catherine, in the happiest state of confidence and curiosity, to Edgar’s Buildings. The two youngest Miss Thorpes were by themselves in the parlour; and, on Anne’s quitting it to call her sister, Catherine took the opportunity of asking the other for some particulars of their yesterday’s party. Maria desired no greater pleasure than to speak of it; and Catherine immediately learnt that it had been altogether the most delightful scheme in the world, that nobody could imagine how charming it had been, and that it had been more delightful than anybody could conceive. Such was the information of the first five minutes; the second unfolded thus much in detail—that they had driven directly to the York Hotel, ate some soup, and bespoke an early dinner, walked down to the pump-room, tasted the water, and laid out some shillings in purses and spars; thence adjourned to eat ice at a pastry-cook’s, and hurrying back to the hotel, swallowed their dinner in haste, to prevent being in the dark; and then had a delightful drive back, only the moon was not up, and it rained a little, and Mr. Morland’s horse was so tired he could hardly get it along.

“Yes, he is living,” said Elizabeth-Jane.

“Is he not kind to you?”

“I’ve no wish to complain of him.”

“There has been a disagreement?”

“A little.”

“Perhaps you were to blame,” suggested the stranger.

“I was—in many ways,” sighed the meek Elizabeth. “I swept up the coals when the servants ought to have done it; and I said I was leery;—and he was angry with me.”

The lady seemed to warm towards her for that reply. “Do you know the impression your words give me?” she said ingenuously. “That he is a hot-tempered man—a little proud—perhaps ambitious; but not a bad man.” Her anxiety not to condemn Henchard while siding with Elizabeth was curious.

To apply the citation of so great a brain as Pascal’s to our countryman would be unfair. Congreve had a certain soundness of mind; of capacity, in the sense intended by Landor, he had little. Judging him by his wit, he performed some happy thrusts, and taking it for genuine, it is a surface wit, neither rising from a depth nor flowing from a spring.

‘On voit qu’il se travaille a dire de bons mots.’

“About the middle of the month. At this same hour.”

“Almost at dark,” said Mrs. Grose.

“Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.”

“Then how did he get in?”

“And how did he get out?” I laughed. “I had no opportunity to ask him! This evening, you see,” I pursued, “he has not been able to get in.”

“He only peeps?”

“I hope it will be confined to that!” She had now let go my hand; she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: “Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch.”

“Grundy, meanwhile, is in a state of complete whirlabout. Long lean knuckly hands pointing and gesticulating! ‘They’re still thinking of things—thinking of things! It’s dreadful. They get it out of books. I can’t imagine where they get it! I must watch! There’re people over there whispering! Nobody ought to whisper!—There’s something suggestive in the mere act! Then, pictures! In the museum—things too dreadful for words. Why can’t we have pure art—with the anatomy all wrong and pure and nice—and pure fiction pure poetry, instead of all this stuff with allusions—allusions?… Excuse me! There’s something up behind that locked door! The keyhole! In the interests of public morality—yes, Sir, as a pure good man—I insist—I’ll look—it won’t hurt me—I insist on looking my duty—M’m’m—the keyhole!’”

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this.

“I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me–rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank.”

“My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child.”

The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. The windows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:

“What was the crime imputed to this man, born on American soil, a man of good moral character, a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church; a husband and a father? Simply this: A copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ had been found in his possession. It was not proved that he had ever read it to the colored people.”]

No time had been lost in posting up advertisements and offering rewards for the capture of these fugitives; for Joe in particular the reward offered was very high. First a thousand dollars, then fifteen hundred, and then two thousand, “an’ all expenses clar an’ clean for his body in Easton Jail.” This high reward stimulated the efforts of the officers who were usually on the lookout for escaping fugitives, and the added rewards for others of the party, and the high price set on Harriet’s head, filled the woods and highways with eager hunters after human prey. When Harriet and her companions approached the long Wilmington Bridge, a warning was given them by some secret friend, that the advertisements were up, and the bridge was guarded by police officers. Quick as lightning the plans were formed in her ready brain, and the terrified party were separated and hidden in the houses of different friends, till her arrangements for their further journey were completed.