With a trembling hand, and apparently in the utmost haste, Willoughby folded and sealed the letter he had just finished; and without allowing himself one moment for reflection, rang and ordered the person who appeared to take it to the post-office immediately.

As the door closed, however, after the servant to whom he had given this command, a sense of terror at having thus himself rendered his fate irremediable, overwhelmed him; and, with an instinctive impulse, he grasped at the bell, but immediately flinging it from him, he assumed a mock composure, and as though there had been some one present before whom to act a part, with a ghastly sort of smile, seated himself. He had for some time been almost expecting, though he would not confess it to his own thoughts, some such blow as this: he had seen, despite every effort to avert his mental vision from the view, that all could not be right; and, weary of secret dread—the true definition of that hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick—he now fancied, for the moment, that there was a sort of stern satisfaction in knowing that fate had done its worst. His brain, however, was already beginning to wander; he was already contemplating, though vaguely, the fatal step which finally ended his career. He thought of Alfred, and his soul secretly yearned for the consolation of pouring out all its sorrows into his affectionate bosom; but Pride, under the form of wounded vanity, with a jealous soreness, shrank from the salutary exposure; while so irritable was the state of his mind, that the very pleadings of his own heart, for the balm it longed for, seemed importunate, and were resisted with something of his characteristic obstinacy. Nay, the pettiest and most contemptible considerations from time to time blended themselves indistinctly with his despair, and became, to a certain degree, governing motives of conduct.

The story of his former disappointment, and of such recent occurrence too, he reflected, with a very disproportionate share of uneasiness, would now be renewed, coupled with the present affair: he should become a proverb—a byword—an object for the finger of scorn to point at. Then the wild excitement of the hope with which, despite his fears, he had with strange inconsistency fed his passion; this was gone, and he could not endure the void within; while it was upon the brain, the fever seemed to feed. Whether there was a physical cause for this, such as Alfred had sometimes feared; or whether the attachment, though violent, being recently formed, still dwelt more in the imagination than in the heart, it might be difficult to decide; but the effect on Willoughby was that some active principle of misery and evil seemed urging him on to a frantic resistance of his fate; compelling his very pulses to beat at a maddening pace; causing an alternation of quickened and suspended breathing, which fatigued him sensibly; and the while presenting to his imagination, snatches of thoughts, and visions of projects so terrific, that while they were in fact the effects of incipient insanity, they became, in their turn, by the fearful excitement they produced, powerful causes of its future development. There was still an inward struggle, but it ended fatally. He could not—no, he never would pronounce her name again! He—in whom else he would have confided every thought—he it was who was preferred; and, though he could not feel a rival's hatred towards his kind, his generous, his unoffending brother—no, he did not, he would not even love him less; but still there was a remembrance that he was his rival; and with it thoughts, strangely blended, of littleness, and the wildest, most extravagant generosity. Alfred should have all—love, wealth, title; and then Lady Palliser could no longer object; but he must wait—it might be for a few days, perhaps only a few hours—nay, the sooner the better; why should he live but to cause and to endure misery? Endure!—did he endure? Can powerlessness to resist the decrees of fate, while yet the heart and feelings openly and wilfully rebel against them, be called endurance? Certainly not. But alas, such rebellion brings with it its own punishment. How often had Willoughby, while fearing the worst, inwardly vowed that were he indeed destined to disappointment, he would never survive the blow. Now the blow had fallen, and though his heart secretly turned towards his habitual, his earliest, his deepest seated affection, the love he bore his twin brother, he was pledged, as it were, to resist every gentler emotion, to embrace despair! and unhappily he did so.

He would carefully conceal every circumstance, every thought; he would allow it to be believed, that the preparations for his marriage were still going forward; nay, he would assume the most exuberant spirits, and to the last moment of existence preserve his fatal secret. When he was gone, when he had found a resting-place for his weary spirit in the grave, Alfred should know all! Reflecting thus, he journeyed on.

Lady Palliser at first took no notice of Sir Willoughby's sudden departure. At a late hour in the evening, however, she received his note. During its perusal she laughed immoderately, then flinging it towards Caroline, said, "Silly young man! my only object in marrying you to him was to chastise you for your improper conduct. It has happened, however, quite as well; for I was getting amazingly tired of the thing. Let the intended punishment," she added, with returning severity of manner, "be a lesson to you, that young women in your station, and with the fortune you will possess, are not to make choice for themselves. When I choose you to marry, and have decided to whom I shall marry you, I shall let you know."

Poor Caroline, how little understood was her position by those, and they were many, the springs of whose peace were poisoned by envy of her greatness! Oh Pride, bane of human happiness! mingling bitter mortification in the otherwise palatable cup of humble competency, and lading with its glittering chains, the slaves on whom it seems to heap its choicest gifts.

Caroline, who had apprehended a storm of rage and disappointment, heightened by, perhaps, some suspicion of the truth, was greatly relieved; and, though habituated to the unaccountable caprices of her mother's temper, was somewhat surprised, at the perfect indifference thus shown by Lady Palliser, respecting her ultimate failure on a point, to carry which, so violent a determination had previously been manifested.

On Willoughby's arrival at Arden, he strained every power of his mind to hide from his brother the true state of his feelings; and, to a certain degree, succeeded; his strange manner inducing in Alfred a belief that it was the immediate prospect of the fulfilment of his wishes, which had unsettled his intellect; for, that it was to a certain degree unsettled, this affectionate brother could not help detecting, in the extravagance, the sometimes almost terrific wildness, of the gaiety assumed by Willoughby. It is impossible to describe the wretchedness of Alfred, while with an aching heart, he watched the flushed cheek and flashing eye of his brother, and listened to the strange unnatural sound of his laugh. We may say, without in the slightest degree exaggerating the disinterestedness of our hero, that every thought of self was forgotten, in the miserable excess of sympathy which the extraordinary circumstances of others now called forth. It was not only for his brother, that brother to whom from infancy he had been so tenderly attached, that he now felt the cruellest apprehensions; but what was also to be the fate of Caroline, and what would be the misery of their mother, the sorrow of the whole family, if, indeed, the awful infliction he had so long dreaded, had at length fallen upon them?

Or even, were this excitement which now alarmed him so much, to subside again for the present, how dreadful was the prospect opened by its having ever assumed so serious a form; and the inconsistency of Willoughby's conduct and manner, the incoherence of his expressions in his ill-sustained attempts at conversation, put the fatal truth beyond a doubt. Yet, were all those symptoms so far to abate, that no eye less watchful, less practised to watch than his own, could detect the lurking malady, was it fair, was it honourable, to involve in so frightful a family affliction, the happiness of a being as yet unconscious of it? Yet who could, who would, who ought to interfere? Delicacy and all good feeling for ever forbade that any surmise should proceed from him. Oh impossible! quite impossible! Fate must roll on, and overwhelm whom it would, he must be passive! But he was more: instinctively he strove to conceal from servants, and the few country neighbours whom chance threw in their way, the hourly increasing infirmity of his brother; treating, while such were present, his extravagance as hilarity, and every contradiction and inconsistency as an intended jest; adding thus the while, by the violent and unnatural contrast to his own secret sufferings.