It was well for Vincent that the worthy butterman was lengthy in his address. The sharp impression of resentment and indignation which possessed him calmed down under this outpouring of words. He bethought himself of his dignity, his character. A squabble of self-defence, in which the sweet name of the lady of his dreams must be involved--an angry encounter of words about her, down here in this mean world to which the very thought of her was alien, wound up her young worshipper into supernatural self-restraint. He edged past the table in the back-parlour to the window, and stood there looking out with a suppressed fever in his veins, biting his lip, and bearing his lecture. On the whole, the best way, perhaps, would have been to leave Carlingford at once, as another man would have done, and leave the Sunday to take care of itself. But though he groaned under his bonds, the young Nonconformist was instinctively confined by them, and had the habits of a man trained in necessary subjection to circumstances. He turned round abruptly when the butterman at last came to a pause. "I will write to one of my friends in Homerton," he said, "if you will make an apology for me in the chapel. I daresay I could get Beecher to come down, who is a very clever fellow; and as for the beginning of that course of sermons----" He stopped short with a certain suppressed disgust. Good heavens! what mockery it seemed. Amid these agonies of life, a man overwhelmed with deadly fear, hatred, and grief might indeed pause to snatch a burning lesson, or appropriate with trembling hands a consolatory promise; but with the whole solemn future of his sister's life hanging on a touch, with all the happiness and peace of his own involved in a feverish uncertainty, with dark unsuspected depths of injury and wretchedness opening at his feet--to think of courses of sermons and elaborate preachments, ineffectual words, and pretences of teaching! For the first time in the commotion of his soul, in the resentments and forebodings to which he gave no utterance, in the bitter conviction of uncertainty in everything which consumed his heart, a doubt of his own ability to teach came to Vincent's mind. He stopped short with an intolerable pang of impatience and self-disgust.