stand cowering there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me on yourself."

Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost instantly.

The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she would have faltered once, for only one half moment, he would have pinioned her; but she was as firm as rock, and her search-answer to his call, he was fain to go back for the ing eyes never left him.

"We don't part so," he said. "Do you think I am drivelling, to let you go in your mad temper ?" "Do you think," she answered, “that I am to be stayed ?"

I'll try, my dear," he said, with a ferocious gesture of his head.

"God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!" she replied.

"And what," he said, "if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts on my part? what if I were to turn too? Come!" and his teeth faintly shone again. "We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some unexpected course. Sit down, sit down!"

But the room was dark; and as she made no

lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place; looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she was not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a glance.

All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and those without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a distance, and going near it, listened. There were several voices talking together; at least two of them in English; and though the door was thick, and there was great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose voice it was.

"Too late!" she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. "I have thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear the He took up his lamp again, and came back shame that will attach to me - resolved to know quickly through all the rooms, stopping as he quitthat it attaches falsely-that you know it too-and ted each, and looking round for her, with the light that he does not, never can, and never shall. I'll raised above his head. He was standing thus in die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone the bed-chamber, when the door, leading to the litwith you, at the dead of night. For this, I have tle passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went met you here, in a false name, as your wife. For to it, and found it fastened on the other side; but this, I have been seen here by those men, and left she had dropped a veil in going through, and shut here. Nothing can save you now." it in the door.

feet.

He would have sold his soul to root her, in her All this time the people on the stairs were ringbeauty, to the floor, and make her arms drop at hering at the bell, and knocking with their hands and sides, and have her at his mercy. But he could not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength within her that was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that her unquenchable hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed the hand that was put with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her white bosom, and he thought that if it struck at him, and failed, it would strike there, just as soon.

He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.

"Lastly, take my warning! look to yourself!" she said, and smiled again. "You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my husband in a carriage in the street to-night!"

Strumpet, it's false!" cried Carker.

At the moment, the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as she held her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound had

come.

"Hark! do you hear it?"

He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and fancied she was coming on, to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone through the opposite doors communicating with the bedchamber, and they shut upon her.

He was not a coward; but these sounds; what had gone before; the strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return from the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he would have been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his heart beat like lead, that the inan whose confidence he had outraged, and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and challenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn't force it. He opened one of the windows, and looked down through the lattice of the blind, into the courtyard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless.

The ringing and knocking still continuing-his panic too-he went back to the door in the bedchamber, and with some new efforts, each more stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase not far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his hat and coat, made the door as secure after him as he could, crept down lamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in a corner, went out where the stars were shining.

CHAPTER LV.

ROB THE GRINDER LOSES HIS PLACE.

man with a lantern, in company with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house, bargaining for the hire of an old phaeton, to Paris.

THE porter at the iron gate which shut the court-a-bed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a yard from the street, had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door on the great staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off.

The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road, which seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream!

Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the slender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came rushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing but a horror in his mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its remotest verge.

In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-re-dow on the deep shade of the night; there was no liance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid.

Some other terror came upon him quite removed from this of being pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the streets. Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, associated with a trembling of the ground, a rush and sweep of something through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to let the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had left behind.

He raised his wicked face, so full of trouble, to the night sky where the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when he first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should do. The dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws might not protect him-the novelty of the feeling that it was strange and remote, originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans-his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or in Sicily, where men might be hired to assassinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner-the waywardness of guilt and fear-perhaps some sympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemesimpelled him to turn back too, and go to England. "I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide," he thought, "to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least I shall not be alone, without a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat."

He muttered Edith's name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along, in the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as if in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. The people were

There was no wind; there was no passing sha

noise. The city lay behind him, lighted here and there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two.

He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; often stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses' bells greeted his anxious ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringing very slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until with a loud shouting and lashing, a shadowy postilion muffled to the eyes, checked his four struggling horses at his side.

"Who goes there! Monsieur?"
66 Yes."

"Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight."

"No matter. Every one to his taste. Were there any other horses ordered at the Post-house ?" "A thousand devils!-and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No."

Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can travel. The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go then! Quick!"

"Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!" Away, at a gallop, over the black landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!

The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the fugitive's ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing clear within. Objects flitting past, merging into one another, dimly descried, confusedly lost sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of fence and cottage immediately upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shifting images that rose up in his mind and vanished as they showed themselves, a black expanse of dread and rage and baffled villany. Oc casionally, a sigh of mountain air came from the distant Jura, fading along the plain. Sometimes that rush which was so furious and horrible, again came sweeping through his fancy, passed away, and left a chill upon his blood.

The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled with the shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand indistinct shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar people, stooping at their desks and books, in their remembered attitudes; strange apparitions of the man whom he was flying from, or of Edith; repetitions in the ringing bells and rolling wheels, of words that had been spoken; confusions of time and place, making last night a month ago, a month ago last night-home now distant beyond hope, now instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry, darkness and confusion in his mind, and all around him.-Hallo! Hi! away at a gallop over the black landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the smoking horses snorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a demon, away in a frantic triumph on the dark road-whither!

Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells ring in his ears "whither?" The wheels roar in his ears "whither ?" All the noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and shadows dance upon the horses' heads like imps. No stopping now: no slackening! On, on! Away with him upon the dark road wildly!

"Hark! What's that ?"
"What?"

"That noise."

"Ah, Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!" to a horse who shook his bells. "What noise ?" "Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what's that?"

"Miscreant with a pig's head, stand still!" to another horse, who bit another, who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. "There is nothing coming.' "Nothing?"

"No, nothing but the day yonder." "You are right, I think. I hear nothing now indeed. Go on!"

The entangled equipage, half hidden in the reeking cloud from the horses, goes on slowly at first, for the driver, checked unnecessarily in his progress, sulkily takes out a pocket knife, and puts a new lash to his whip. Then "Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!" Away once more, savagely.

And now the stars faded, and the day glimmered, and standing in the carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had come, and see that there was no traveller within view, on all the heavy expanse. And soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shine on corn-fields and vineyards; and solitary labourers, risen from little temporary huts by heaps of stones upon the road, were, here and there, at work repairing the highway, or eating bread. By and by, there were peasants going to their daily labour, or to market, or lounging at the doors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he passed. And then there was a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded, and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace to the taper tips of the extin

He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one object of reflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for a minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of a voluptuous compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of his treachery to one who had been true and generous to him, but whose least proud word and look he had treasured up, at interest, for years for false and subtle men will always secretly despise and dislike the object upon which they fawn, and always resent the payment and receipt of hoimage that they know to be worthless; these were the themes uppermost in his mind. A lurking rage against the woman who had so entrapped him and avenged herself, was always there; crude and mis-guishers upon the turrets. shapen schemes of retaliation upon her, floated in Gathered up moodily in a corner of the carriage, his brain; but nothing was distinct. A burry and and only intent on going fast-except when he contradiction pervaded all his thoughts. Even stood up, for a mile together, and looked back; while he was so busy with this fevered, ineffectual which he would do whenever there was a piece of thinking, his one constant idea was, that he would open country-he went on, still postponing thought postpone reflection until some indefinite time.

Then, the old days before the second marriage rose up in his remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealous he had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at a distance, and drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself should cross; and then he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like a scared thief, from only the poor dupe?

He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow to be within his own knowledge such a miserable tool was like being paralysed. With an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr. Dombey and hated himself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else.

--

Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so persuaded of this, that he cried out, "Stop!" preferring even the loss of ground to such uncertainty. The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together, across the road.

"The devil!" cried the driver, looking over his houlder. “what's the matter?"

indefinitely, and still always tormented with thinking to no purpose.

Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constant apprehension of being overtaken, or met-for he was groundlessly afraid even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he was going-oppressed him heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. The monotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like a vision, in which nothing was quite real but his own torment,

It was a vision of long roads, that stretched away to an horizon, always receding and never gained; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down, where faces came to dark doors and ill-glazed windows, and where rows of mud-bespattered cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long narrow streets, butting and lowing, and receiving blows on their blunt heads from bludgeons that might have beaten them in; of bridges, crosses, churches, postyards, new horses being put in against their wills, and the horses of the last stage reeking, panting, and lay. ing their drooping heads together dolefully at stable

Of morning, noon, and sunset; night, and the Of sunset once again, and nightfall. Of long rising of an early moon. Of long roads tempo- roads again, and dead of night, and feeble lights rarily left behind, and a rough pavement reached; in windows by the road-side; and still the old mo. of battering and clattering over it, and looking up, notony of bells, and wheels, and horses' feet, and among house-roofs, at a great church-tower; of no rest. Of dawn, and daybreak, and the rising of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking the sun. Of toiling slowly up a hill, and feeling draughts of wine that had no cheering influence; on its top the fresh sea-breeze; and seeing the of coming forth afoot, among a host of beggars-morning light upon the edges of the distant waves. blind men with quivering eyelids, led by old women Of coming down into a harbour when the tide was holding candles to their faces; idiot girls; the lame, at its full, and seeing fishing-boats float, in, and the epileptic, and the palsied—of passing through glad women and children waiting for them. Of the clamour, and looking from his seat at the up- nets and seamen's clothes spread out to dry upon turned countenances and outstretched hands, with a the shore; of busy sailors, and their voices high hurried dread of recognising some pursuer pressing among ships' masts and rigging; of the buoyancy forward-of gallopping away again, upon the long, and brightness of the water, and the universal long road, gathered up, dull and stunned, in his sparkling. corner, or rising to see where the moon shone faintly on a patch of the same endless road miles away, or looking back to see who followed.