No, dear,
I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your
fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed
upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the
mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome
printer. _Au revoir_!"
He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along
the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue
ocean on his right.
"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I
should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here."
He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm.
He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make
it urgent.
CHAPTER VI.
DESPERATE MEASURES.
Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on
that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but
his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the
feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr.
Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British
Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst
inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these
wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in
which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright,
through the diamond-paned lattice.
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