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.