The week’s reprieve has ended; my Judgment Day has come.  Never, never, surely, did seven days race so madly past, tumbling over each other’s heels.  Even Sunday—­Sunday, which mostly contains at least forty-eight hours—­has gone like a flash.  Morning service, afternoon service, good looks, sermon to the servants, supper, they all run into one another like dissolving views.  For the first time in my life, my sleep is broken.  I fall asleep in a fever of irresolution.  I awake in one.  I walk about in one.  I feed the jackdaw in one.  I box Bobby’s ears in one.  My appetite (oh, portent!) flags.  In intense excitement, who can eat yards of bread-and-butter, pounds of oatmeal-porridge, as has ever been my bucolic habit?  Shall I marry Sir Roger, or shall I not?  The birds, the crowing cocks, the church-bells, the gong for dinner, the old pony whinnying in the park, they all seem to say this.  It seems written on the sailing clouds, on the pages of every book that I open.  Armies of pros wage battle against legions of cons, and every day the issue of the fight seems even more and more doubtful.

The morning of the day has arrived, and I am still undecided.  I dress in a perfect storm of doubts and questionings.  I put on my gown, without the faintest idea of whether it is inside out, or the reverse.  I go slowly downstairs, every banister marked by a fresh decision.  I open the dining-room door.  Father’s voice is the first thing that I hear; father’s voice, raised and rasping.  He is standing up, and has a letter in his hand; from the engaging blue of its color, and the harmony of its shape, too evidently a bill.

“I regret to have to hurt your feelings,” he is saying, in that awful civil voice, at which we all—­small and great—­quake, “but the next time that this occurs” (pointing to the bill), “I must request you to find accommodation for yourself elsewhere, as really my poor house is not a fit place for a young gentleman with such princely views on the subject of expenditure.”

The object of this pleasant harangue is Algy, who, also standing, with his face very white, his lips very much compressed, and his eyes flashing with a furious light, is fronting his parent on the hearth-rug.

Behind the tea-urn, mother is mingling her drink with tears, and making little covert signs to Algy, at all rates to hold his tongue.

My mind is made up, never to be unmade again.  I will marry Sir Roger.  He shall pay all Algy’s debts, and forever dry mother’s sad, wet eyes.

* * * * *

The weather of paradise is gone back to paradise.  This day is very earthly.  There has been a sharp, cold shower, and there is still a strong rain-wind, which has snapped a score of tulip-heads.  Poor, brave Jour ne sols!  Prone they lie on the garden-beds, defiled, dispetalled.  Even the survivors are stained and dashed, and the sweet Nancies look pinched and small.  If you were to go down on your knees to them, they could not give you any scent.  I am walking up and down the room, in a state of the utmost agitation.  My heart is beating so as to make me feel quite sick.  My fingers are very hot, but hardly so hot as my face.