'That's a fine play, Faustus--Marlowe,' he said. Some of the lines he had read were booming funereally in his ear like a far-off bell. 'I wonder whether Marlowe had run a wild course, like some of us here--myself--and could not retrieve. That honest little mountebank, Puddock, does not understand a word of it. I wish I were like Puddock. Poor little fellow!' So, after awhile, Devereux returned to his chair before the fire, and on his way again drank of the waters of Lethe, and sat down, not forgetting, but remorseful, over the fire. 'I'll drink no more to-night--there--curse me if I do.' The fire was waxing low in the grate. 'To-morrow's a new day. Why, I never made a resolution about it before. I can keep it. 'Tis easily kept. To-morrow I begin.' And with fists clenched in his pockets, he vowed his vow, with an oath into the fire; and ten minutes were not past and over when his eye wandered thirstily again to the flask on the middle of the table, and with a sardonic, flushed smile, he quoted the 'Good Angel's' words:-- 'O, Faustus, lay that damned book aside, And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul.' And then pouring out a dram, he looked on it, and said, with the 'Evil Angel'-- 'Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art, Wherein all Nature's treasure is contained: Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky, Lord and commander of the elements.' And then, with a solitary sneer, he sipped it. And after awhile he drank one glass more--they were the small glasses then in vogue--and shoved it back, with-- 'There; that's the last.' And then, perhaps, there was one other 'last;' and after that 'the _very_ last.' Hang it! it _must_ be the last, and so on, I suppose. And Devereux was pale, and looked wild and sulky on parade next morning. CHAPTER LXIII. IN WHICH A LIBERTY IS TAKEN WITH MR. NUTTER'S NAME, AND MR. DANGERFIELD STANDS AT THE ALTAR. Poor Mrs. Nutter continued in a state of distracted and flighty tribulation, not knowing what to make of it, nor, indeed, knowing the worst; for the neighbours did not tell her half they might, nor drop a hint of the dreadful suspicion that dogged her absent helpmate. She was sometimes up rummaging among the drawers, and fidgeting about the house, without any clear purpose, but oftener lying on her bed, with her clothes on, crying. When she got hold of a friend, she disburthened her soul, and called on him or her for endless consolations and assurances, which, for the most part, she herself prescribed. There were, of course, fits of despair as well as starts of hope; and bright ideas, accounting for everything, and then clouds of blackness, and tornadoes of lamentation.