pride, that flew for support to the injury she had done to his devotions,
and the offence to the sacred edifice. After thinking over it, he
decided that he must quit his residence; and as it appeared to him in the
light of duty, he, with an unspoken anguish, commissioned the house-agent
of his town to sell his lease or let the house furnished, without further
parley.

From the house-agent's shop he turned into the chemist's, for a tonic--
a foolish proceeding, for he had received bracing enough in the blow he
had just dealt himself, but he had been cogitating on tonics recently,
imagining certain valiant effects of them, with visions of a former
careless happiness that they were likely to restore. So he requested to
have the tonic strong, and he took one glass of it over the counter.

Fifteen minutes after the draught, he came in sight of his house, and
beholding it, he could have called it a gentlemanly residence aloud under
Lady Camper's windows, his insurgency was of such violence. He talked of
it incessantly, but forbore to tell Elizabeth, as she was looking pale,
the reason why its modest merits touched him so. He longed for the hour
of his next dose, and for a caricature to follow, that he might drink and
defy it. A caricature was really due to him, he thought; otherwise why
had he abandoned his bijou dwelling? Lady Camper, however, sent none.
He had to wait a fortnight before one came, and that was rather a
likeness, and a handsome likeness, except as regarded a certain
disorderliness in his dress, which he knew to be very unlike him. Still
it despatched him to the looking-glass, to bring that verifier of facts
in evidence against the sketch. While sitting there he heard the
housemaid's knock at the door, and the strange intelligence that his
daughter was with Lady Camper, and had left word that she hoped he would
not forget his engagement to go to Mrs. Baerens' lawn-party.