assisted to bed.


Next morning it was obvious that he could not possibly go to King's-
Hintock for several days at least, and there on the bed he lay,
cursing his inability to proceed on an errand so personal and so
delicate that no emissary could perform it. What he wished to do
was to ascertain from Betty's own lips if her aversion to Reynard
was so strong that his presence would be positively distasteful to
her. Were that the case, he would have borne her away bodily on the
saddle behind him.

But all that was hindered now, and he repeated a hundred times in
Tupcombe's hearing, and in that of the nurse and other servants, 'I
wish to God something would happen to him!'

This sentiment, reiterated by the Squire as he tossed in the agony
induced by the powerful drugs of the day before, entered sharply
into the soul of Tupcombe and of all who were attached to the house
of Dornell, as distinct from the house of his wife at King's-
Hintock. Tupcombe, who was an excitable man, was hardly less
disquieted by the thought of Reynard's return than the Squire
himself was. As the week drew on, and the afternoon advanced at
which Reynard would in all probability be passing near Falls on his
way to the Court, the Squire's feelings became acuter, and the
responsive Tupcombe could hardly bear to come near him. Having left
him in the hands of the doctor, the former went out upon the lawn,
for he could hardly breathe in the contagion of excitement caught
from the employer who had virtually made him his confidant. He had
lived with the Dornells from his boyhood, had been born under the