Perhaps, indeed, Captain Delaware's anxiety was the more keen and corroding, because he forced himself to conceal it, and to appear perfectly confident and careless. Blanche, on her part, avoided all communication with her brother, except that, when they met at dinner and at tea, her eyes besought him to spare her. The moments waned; neither Mr. Tims nor Burrel, nor any messenger from either, appeared during the evening; and, as night began to fall, Captain Delaware's impatience gradually got the better of his self-command; and finding himself in the situation of a shell, the fuse of which was rapidly burning down to the powder, and which must consequently explode in a short time, he thought it better to carry himself away, and let his heat and disappointment reck itself upon any other objects than his friends and relations. As the most natural vent for such feelings, he took his way towards Ryebury; but when he returned, after about an hour's absence, he appeared to the eyes of his sister--who strove to read his looks with no small apprehension--more heated and irritable than before. "Well, William, what does Mr. Tims say now?" demanded Sir Sidney Delaware, whose own anxiety had at once told him whither his son had turned his footsteps, although Captain Delaware had given no intimation of his purpose. "I have not seen him, sir!" was the reply. "The old dotard would not let me in. Afraid of _robbers_, I suppose. I rang till I was tired, and then came away. But it is no matter; the money will be forthcoming to-morrow, I have no doubt. The coach does not arrive till the afternoon; and Lord Ashborough's solicitor did not come by it to-night, for I enquired at the inn." Things which, buoyed up on the life-preserver of a light heart, float like feathers over all the waves of adversity that inundate this briny world, sink the soul down to the bottom of despair the moment that the life-preserver, dashed against some sharp rock, or beaten by some more violent surge, suffers the waters to flow in, and the fine elastic air to escape. Not many weeks before, Blanche Delaware would have wondered, in the happy contentedness of her own heart, at the anxiety and disappointment of her brother and her father, and would have looked upon the events which they seemed to regret so bitterly, but as a very small and easily borne misfortune. But in the present depression of her spirits, it overwhelmed her even more than it did them. Her own grief was so deep, that she could not well bear any more; and, soon after her brother's return, she retired to her chamber to weep. The night went by, and Blanche and her father descended to the breakfast-table somewhat earlier than usual; for care makes light sleepers. "Is William out?" demanded Sir Sidney Delaware, as he met his daughter. "I wished to have gone to Ryebury with him." "I do not think he is down yet!" she replied. "I have not seen him, and yet it is odd he should be the last up to-day."