Vincent hastened out of the house. He ventured to say nothing to himself as he went up Grange Lane in the starless night, with all the silence and swiftness of passion. He dared not trust himself to think. His very heart, the physical organ itself, seemed throbbing and bursting with conscious pain. Had she loved this mysterious stranger whose undecipherable shadow hung over the minister's path? To Vincent's fancy, nothing else could account for her agitation; and was he so true, and to be trusted? Poor gentle Susan, whom such a fate and doom was approaching as might have softened her brother's heart, had but little place in his thoughts. He was not glad of that favourable verdict. He was overpowered with jealous rage and passion. Alas for his dreams! Once more, what downfall and over-throw had come of it! once more he had come down to his own position, and the second awakening was harder than the first. When he got home, and found his mother, affectionately proud, waiting to hear all about the great lady he had been visiting, it is impossible to express in words the intolerable impatience and disgust with himself and his fate which overpowered the young man. He had a bad headache, Mrs. Vincent said, she was sure, and he did not contradict her. It was an unspeakable relief to him when she went to her own room, and delivered him from the tender scrutiny of her eyes--those eyes full of nothing but love, which, in the irritation of his spirit, drove him desperate. He did not tell her about the unexpected discovery he had made. The very name of Fordham would have choked him that night. CHAPTER XIV. The next morning brought no letters except from Susan. Fordham, if so true as Lady Western called him, was not, Vincent thought with bitterness, acting as an honourable man should in this emergency. But perhaps he might come to Carlingford in the course of the day, to see Susan's brother. The aspect of the young minister was changed when he made his appearance at the breakfast table. Mrs. Vincent made the most alarmed inquiries about his health, but--stopped abruptly in making them by his short and ungracious answer--came to a dead pause; and with a pang of fright and mortification, acknowledged to herself that her son was no longer her boy, whose entire heart she knew, but a man with a life and concerns of his own, possibly not patent to his mother. That breakfast was not a cheerful meal. There had been a long silence, broken only by those anxious attentions to each other's personal comfort, with which people endeavour to smooth down the embarrassment of an intercourse apparently confidential, into which some sudden unexplainable shadow has fallen. At last Vincent got up from the table, with a little outbreak of impatience. "I can't eat this morning; don't ask me. Mother, get your bonnet on," said the young man; "we must go to see Mrs. Hilyard to-day."