Nothing occurred to me of any particular moment during the following day.  Isopel Berners did not return; but Mr. Petulengro and his companions came home from the fair early in the morning.  When I saw him, which was about midday, I found him with his face bruised and swelled.  It appeared that, some time after I had left him, he himself perceived that the jockeys with whom he was playing cards were cheating him and his companion; a quarrel ensued, which terminated in a fight between Mr. Petulengro and one of the jockeys, which lasted some time, and in which Mr. Petulengro, though he eventually came off victor, was considerably beaten.  His bruises, in conjunction with his pecuniary loss, which amounted to about seven pounds, were the cause of his being much out of humour; before night, however, he had returned to his usual philosophic frame of mind, and, coming up to me as I was walking about, apologized for his behaviour on the preceding day, and assured me that he was determined, from that time forward, never to quarrel with a friend for giving him good advice.

Two more days passed, and still Isopel Berners did not return.  Gloomy thoughts and forebodings filled my mind.  During the day I wandered about the neighbouring roads in the hopes of catching an early glimpse of her and her returning vehicle; and at night lay awake, tossing about on my hard couch, listening to the rustle of every leaf, and occasionally thinking that I heard the sound of her wheels upon the distant road.  Once at midnight, just as I was about to fall into unconsciousness, I suddenly started up, for I was convinced that I heard the sound of wheels.  I listened most anxiously, and the sound of wheels striking against stones was certainly plain enough.  “She comes at last,” thought I, and for a few moments I felt as if a mountain had been removed from my breast;—­“here she comes at last, now, how shall I receive her?  Oh,” thought I, “I will receive her rather coolly, just as if I was not particularly anxious about her—­that’s the way to manage these women.”  The next moment the sound became very loud, rather too loud, I thought, to proceed from her wheels, and then by degrees became fainter.  Rushing out of my tent, I hurried up the path to the top of the dingle, where I heard the sound distinctly enough, but it was going from me, and evidently proceeded from something much larger than the cart of Isopel.  I could, moreover, hear the stamping of a horse’s hoof at a lumbering trot.  Those only whose hopes have been wrought up to a high pitch, and then suddenly cast down, can imagine what I felt at that moment; and yet when I returned to my lonely tent, and lay down on my hard pallet, the voice of conscience told me that the misery I was then undergoing I had fully merited, for the unkind manner in which I had intended to receive her, when for a brief moment I supposed that she had returned.