“He thinks it doubtful--he does not believe they have weathered the storm,” said Luttrell; and he sat down with his head between his hands, stunned and almost senseless. There is no such terrible conflict as that of a proud spirit with misfortune. He who sees nothing in his calamities but his own hard fate has the dreariest and least hopeful of all battles before him. Now, though Luttrell was ready to utter his self-accusings aloud, and charge himself audibly with the faults that had wrecked his life, yet, strange as it may seem, the spirit of true humility had never entered his heart, far less any firm resolve to repent. With all the terrible consequences that his unbridled temper could evoke before him, he still could not but regard himself as more persecuted than erring. “I did not make myself,” cried he, impiously. “I no more implanted the passions that sway than the limbs that move me! Other men--is not the world full of them?--have been as haughty, as unyielding, and domineering as myself, and yet have had no such disasters heaped upon them--far from it. Out of their very faults has sprung, their fortune. In their pride they have but asserted that superiority that they knew they possessed.” While he reasoned thus, his heart, truer to nature than his brain, trembled at every freshening of the storm, and sickened as the dark squalls shot across the sea. Nor was his agony less that he had to control it, and not let those about him see what he suffered. He sat down to his breakfast at the accustomed hour, and affected to eat as usual. Indeed, he rebuked Molly for some passing carelessness, and sent her away almost choked with tears, “as if,” as she sobbed to herself--“as if she was a dog. To know whether the milk ‘took the fire’ or not! Musha! any man but himself wouldn’t know whether it was milk or salt water was afore him.” It was his habit to pass the morning in reading. He would not appear to deviate from this custom, but sat down to his books as usual. No sooner, however, was all still and quiet around him than he stole up to the tower, and stationed himself at the narrow window that looked over the sea. The wind had greatly abated, and the sea also gone down, but there was still the heavy roll and the deafening crash upon the shore, that follow a storm. “The hurricane is passing westward,” muttered Luttrell; “it has done its work here!” And a bitter scorn curled his lips as he spoke. He was calling upon his pride to sustain him. It was a hollow ally in his time of trouble; for, as he gazed and gazed, his eyes _would_ grow dim with tears, and his heavy heart would sigh, as though to bursting.