and profession for her.  And with this train of thought another ran parallel,—­the shame and the wrong of it all.  The disgrace to his wife and daughters, the humiliation to himself.  Each bitter thought beat on his heart like the hammer on the anvil.  They fought and blended with each other.  He could not master one.  He felt himself being beaten to the ground.  He made agonizing efforts to retain control over the surging wave of anguish, rising, rising, rising from his breast to his brain.  And failing to do so, he fell with the mighty cry of one who, even in the death agony, protests against the victor.

The news spread as if all the birds in the air carried it.  There were a dozen physicians in Seat-Sandal before noon.  There was a crowd of shepherds around it, waiting in silent groups for their verdict.  All the afternoon the gentlemen of the Dales were coming and going with offers of help and sympathy; and in the lonely parlor the rector was softly pacing up and down, muttering, as he walked, passages from the “Order for the Visitation of the Sick":—­

“O Saviour of the world, who by thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us, save us, and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.

“Spare us good Lord.  Spare thy people whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood.

“Shut not up thy tender mercies in displeasure; but make him to hear of joy and gladness.

“Deliver him from the fear of the enemy.  Lift up the light of thy countenance upon him.  Amen.”

CHAPTER IX.

ESAU.

                    “To be weak is miserable,
     Doing or suffering.”

                    “Now conscience wakes despair
     That slumberd; wakes the bitter memory
     Of what he was, what is, and what must be.”

It was the middle of February before Harry could leave Sandal-Side.  He had remained there, however, only out of that deference to public opinion which no one likes to offend; and it had been a most melancholy and anxious delay.  He was not allowed to enter the squire’s room, and indeed he shrank from the ordeal.  His mother and Charlotte treated him with a reserve he felt to be almost dislike.  He had been so accustomed to consider mother-love sufficient to cover all faults, that he forgot there was a stronger tie; forgot that to the tender wife the husband of her youth—­her lover, friend, companion—­is far nearer and dearer than the tie that binds her to sons and daughters.

Also, he did not care to give any consideration to the fact, that both his mother and Charlotte resented the kind of daughter and sister he had forced upon them.  So there was little sympathy with him at Seat-Sandal, and he fancied that all the gentlemen of the neighborhood treated him with a perceptible coolness of manner.  Perhaps they did.  There are social intuitions, mysterious in their origin, and yet hitting singularly near the truth.  Before circumstances permitted him to leave Sandal-Side, he had begun to hate the Seat and the neighborhood, and every thing pertaining to it, with all his heart.