This was all he said. He went out of the library leaving his son there, leaving him at liberty to follow out his own reflections. And poor Jack’s thoughts were not pleasant. When his father was gone he came from the window, and threw himself into the nearest chair. Make an end of it! Yes, that was it. Easy to say, very easy to advise, but how to do it? Was he simply to skulk away like a villain, and leave her to pine and wonder--for she would wonder and pine, bless her! She believed in him, whatever other people might do. Keppel, indeed! as if she would look at Keppel, much less talk to him, walk with him, lift her sweet eyes to him as she had begun to do. And good heavens, this was to end! Would it not be better that life itself should end? That, perhaps, would please every body just as well. Poor Jack! this was the wild way he got on thinking, until the solemn butler opened the door and begged his pardon, and told him breakfast was ready. He could have pitched something at poor Willis’s head with pleasure, but he did not do it. He even got up and thrust back his thoughts into the recesses of his brain, as it were, and after a while settled his resolution and went to breakfast. That was one good of his higher breeding. It did not give him much enlightenment as to what he should do, but it taught him to look as if nothing was the matter with him and to put his trouble in his pocket, and face the ordinary events of life without making a show of himself or his emotions, which is always a triumph for any man. He could not manage to eat much, but he managed to bear himself much as usual, though not entirely to conceal from Sara that something had happened; but then she was a woman, and knew every change of his face. As for Mr. Brownlow, he was pleased by his son’s steadiness. He was pleased to see that he bore it like a man, and bore no malice; and he was still more pleased when Jack jumped into the dogcart and took the reins without saying any thing about his intention. It is true the mare had her way that morning, and carried them into Masterton at the speed of an express train, scattering every body on her route as if by magic. Their course was as good as a charge of cavalry through the streets of the suburb they had to go through. But notwithstanding his recklessness, Jack drove well, and nobody came to any harm. When he threw the reins to the groom the mare was straining and quivering in every muscle, half to the admiration, half to the alarm of her faithful attendant, whose life was devoted to her. “But, bless you, she likes it,” he said in confidence to his friends, when he took the palpitating animal to her stable at the Green Man. “Nothing she likes better, though he’s took it out of her this morning, he have. I reckon the governor have been a-taking it out of ’im.”