She would have followed him, but that she sank gasping and fainting upon the floor. CHAPTER VII.--THE ELOPEMENT--THE LONELY FLIGHT. For now I stand as one upon a rock, Environ’d with a wilderness of sea, Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave; Expecting ever when some envious surge Will in his brinish bowels swallow him. --Shakspere. Mr. Grahame, after the departure of Chewkle, suffered the worst tortures of a terrible suspense. He had no peace night nor day within his house, or away from it. The second flight of Helen, and the narration given of it by Lester Vane, in terms calculated to excoriate the haughty man’s arrogant pride, were deprived of their more agonizing features by the greater evils that threatened him. Already had Nathan Gomer so far kept his word, that he had caused process to be issued upon the sums last advanced: and Mr. Grahame had the inexpressible mortification of being served with a series of writs in his own library, and by no other person than Charles Clinton. The firm with which he was connected had been instructed by Nathan Gomer, and the delicate task--a very painful one, as it proved--of serving process was entrusted to him, because Mr. Grahame had not responded to a request made to him to name a solicitor who would accept service for him. Charley was quite aware of the desperate position of Mr. Grahame’s affairs, as well as of the internal misery raging in the bosom of one-half of the members of the family, and the inflated elevation of the other portion, ignorant, through the most blind fatuity, of the fearful precipice upon which they were already tottering. His interviews with Evangeline had, since the second departure of Helen from home, been several; for she anxiously desired not only to learn the fate of her sister, but she formed a wild notion of leaving home herself, and living with Helen, whatever might be the circumstances in which she was placed. She was wholly ignorant of the outer world; she had been brought up in strict home seclusion, and from the almost excessive amiability of her nature had been, as will have been seen, kept in the back ground, as a degenerate member of a proud race. Her impulses had been sneered at or sharply checked, but no attempt had been made to give them a direction. She was unhappy at home, and there seemed every probability to her that if she remained with her family she would continue to be treated ever the same--more, indeed, like an unwelcome dependant than a child, loving and loveable.