How was a man so weighted to run for such stakes as those he was striving to carry off? When Mr. Hart left him he was not only sick in the stomach, but sick at heart also,--sick all over. He had gone from bad to worse; he had lost the knowledge of the flavour of vice and virtue; and yet now, when there was present to him the vanishing possibility of redeeming everything by this great marriage, it seemed to him that a life of honourable ease--such a life as Sir Harry would wish him to live if permitted to marry the girl and dwell among his friends at Humblethwaite--would be much sweeter, much more to his real taste, than the life which he had led for the last ten years. What had been his positive delights? In what moments had he actually enjoyed them? From first to last had there not been trouble and danger and vexation of spirit, and a savour of dirt about it all, which even to his palate had been nauseous? Would he not willingly reform? And yet, when the prospect of reform was brought within reach of his eyes, of a reform so pleasant in all its accompaniments, of reform amidst all the wealth of Humblethwaite, with Emily Hotspur by his side, there came these harpies down upon him rendering it all impossible. Thrice, in speaking of them to himself, he called them harpies; but it never occurred to him to think by what name Mr. Walker would have designated him. But things around him were becoming so serious that he must do something. It might be that he would fall to the ground, losing everything. He could not understand about Bullbean. Bullbean had had his share of the plunder in regard to all that he had seen. The best part of the evening's entertainment had taken place after Mr. Bullbean had retired. No doubt, however, Mr. Bullbean might do him a damage. He had written to Sir Harry, refusing altogether the offer made to him. Could he, after writing such a letter, at once go to the lawyer and accept the offer? And must he admit to himself, finally, that it was altogether beyond his power to win his cousin's hand? Was there no hope of that life at Humblethwaite which, when contemplated at a distance, had seemed to him to be so green and pleasant? And what would Emily think of him? In the midst of all his other miseries that also was a misery. He was able, though steeped in worthlessness, so to make for himself a double identity as to imagine and to personify a being who should really possess fine and manly aspirations with regard to a woman, and to look upon himself,--his second self,--as that being; and to perceive with how withering a contempt such a being would contemplate such another man as was in truth the real George Hotspur, whose actual sorrows and troubles had now become so unendurable.