Leaving the lady and the two gentlemen to follow whatever path the gay and somewhat capricious elf who ruled the whims of Lady Anne Mellent chose to dictate, we will, with the reader's good leave, stay a little with Mr. Winkworth, to whom we have not been altogether as civil as we might have been. We have left him alone, weary and wounded, with very little to do, though a good deal to think about. Now, to say truth, the fact of having a good deal to think about is not in general a source of consolation to a sick or wounded man, unless it be of so important and pressing a nature as to postpone corporeal suffering or mental occupation. A general somewhat smartly wounded may go through a battle, hardly discovering the injury he has received; for the immense interests that press upon the mind withdraw all attention from the body's pain; but were he to be carried to the rear, to know nothing of what was going on, to receive no momentary excitement, to have no engrossing object pressed upon his attention every instant, the very pangs which would have been unfelt, in the fiery interests of an all-important fight, would now in idleness weigh down the very spirit which in activity would have subdued them. Were you ever wounded, reader? I mean something, of course, more serious than the cut of the schoolboy knife, or any of the little ordinary accidents of civilian life. If you have, you will know that, though sometimes for a minute or two you are hardly aware that you are injured, yet gradually very unpleasant sensations succeed to the first numbing effects of the wound: a burning heat, a swollen and tingling stiffness of all the neighbouring parts, come on--a sort of horny sensation, as if the whole flesh around were changed into an exceedingly sensitive but cartilaginous substance. Gradually the inflammation affects the constitution, the whole frame sympathises with the wounded part, the stomach turns sick and weary, the head aches, the limbs are full of lassitude. At the same time the spirit sinks terribly, at least in ordinary cases; amusements, occupations which we were once fond of, afford us relaxation no longer; and that terrible symptom which doctors call precordial anxiety deprives us of rest and tranquillity.