half, and I did not wish to be taken to her. I did wish to smell the
piney air about the lake-palace; but the thought of Ottilia caused me no
quick pulsations.

My father remained an hour. He could not perceive the drift of my
objection to go either to Bulsted or to Riversley, and desire that my
misadventure should be unknown at those places. However, he obeyed me,
as I could always trust him to do scrupulously, and told a tale at
Bulsted. In the afternoon he returned in a carriage to convey me to the
seaside. When I was raised I fainted, and saw the last of the camp on
Durstan much as I had come to it first. Sickness and swimming of the
head continued for several days. I was persecuted with the sensation of
the carriage journey, and an iteration of my father's that ran: 'My son's
inanimate body in my arms,' or 'Clasping the lifeless body of my sole
son, Harry Richmond,' and other variations. I said nothing about it.
He told me aghast that I had spat blood. A battery of eight fists,
having it in the end all its own way, leaves a deeper indentation on its
target than a pistol-shot that passes free of the vital chords. My
convalescence in Germany was a melody compared with this. I ought to
have stopped in the tent, according to the wise old mother's advice,
given sincerely, for prudence counselled her to strike her canvas and be
gone. There I should have lain, interested in the progress of a bee, the
course of a beetle or a cloud, a spider's business, and the shaking of
the gorse and the heather, until good health had grown out of
thoughtlessness. The very sight of my father was as a hive of humming
troubles.

His intense anxiety about me reflected in my mind the endless worry I had
concerning him. It was the intellect which condemned him when he wore a
joyful air, and the sensations when he waxed over-solicitous. Whether or