But he comes up once more, and shakes his head, and coughs and clutches tightly to the twining hair, that even in the water has a death-like clamminess in his fingers. He is frightfully blown now, and a wave takes him sideways and turns him over--he is under Hardingstone, and this time he only comes up for an instant to go under again, with a suffocating feeling at his chest, and a painful pressure on his ears. Now he gulps at the salt water that appears to fill body, and lungs, and head; and now he seems to be whirling round and round; everything is green and giddy--there is something crooked before his face--and a feeling of pleasing languor forbids him to grasp it. The Great Uncertainty is very near--a glare of white light dazzles his eyes, and the waters settle over him, as he holds on to Hardingstone’s hair with the clutch of a drowning man. CHAPTER III THE HANDSOME GOVERNESS BLIND-MAN’S BUFF--AN UNCEREMONIOUS INTRODUCTION--THE MUSIC-MISTRESS--A CATHEDRAL TOWN--THE YOUNG LADIES’ SEMINARY--MARY DELAVAL AND HER ADMIRER--AN ATTACK REPULSED--THE MILITARY ROUTED--A PRECARIOUS LIVELIHOOD Little, indeed, do one half the world know how the other half live. Fortunate is it for us all, that we have neither the invisible cap, nor the shoes of swiftness, that did their owner such good service in the fairy tale. We might be astonished, not to say disgusted, could we follow our nearest and dearest for one short half-hour after they have left our sight; could we see them, when they think no mortal eye is upon their actions, we might smile or we might weep, according as our temperament bordered upon the sentimental or the cynical. Yet is there One that always watches. How comes it that when we hide ourselves from man, we think no shame to expose our follies to man’s Creator? Will a day come when everything shall be made known? when there will be no more hypocrisy--no more respectability--no more difference between vice on the house-top and vice in the corner? There will be some strange shifting of places when that day does come--much shrinking and wincing from the general Show-up--much scarlet shame, and livid remorse, when the brow can no more be covered, nor the past undone. ’Tis a pity we should think so little of payment till the bill comes due;--in the meantime we go blindly on, deceiving and deceived--we know but little of our neighbour, and we trust in heaven our neighbour knows nothing whatever about us; so we grope about in the dark, and call it Life.