On entering the sitting-room, which had been appropriated to him, Beauchamp cast himself back in a chair, and, for a moment, reflected on the extraordinary interview he had just gone through. But a new discomfort now assailed him, and he felt a degree of confusion of thought, and even indistinctness of memory, that pained and alarmed him. Could the blow he had received on the head, he asked himself, the consequences of which he had entirely neglected--could it have injured his brain! Nevertheless, his personal feelings occupied him but for an instant, and were only permitted to cut across his thoughts of Blanche Delaware, and interrupt the ideas which his conversation with her had called up, when the dizzy mistiness of his brain prevented him from pursuing clearly any defined train of thinking. Should he engage a boat, he asked himself, and follow Sir Sidney to Cherbourg, in search of farther explanations--perhaps, I might say, in search of farther hopes; for with all the confused and painful feelings that his brief interview with Blanche Delaware had excited, there had also been left behind a sweet, consoling hope, that after all he was beloved, and that time might yet make her his own. He paused upon that idea, which, like a gleam of sunshine upon the dark and struggling waters of the sea, gave one bright spot for the mind's eye to rest upon, in the midst of the doubts and anxieties that whirled around him. Should he follow her, he thought, and inquire what was meant by her allusion to her brother; or should he stay and do what he conceived to be his duty, in bringing to justice, as far as he could effect it, the men who had committed the crime at Ryebury. "I will see what has been already discovered," he said at length, "and then act as I find necessary." In consequence of this resolution, he rang the bell, and demanded the newspapers of the last two or three days; but for some minutes after they were brought, he could scarcely read the matter they contained, so fearfully did the letters dance before his sight when he attempted to fix his eyes upon the page. He succeeded at length in gathering the contents; and it may be unnecessary to say, that, when he did so, he found sufficient at once to determine his conduct. The whole account of what had taken place at Emberton was now before him; and, with feelings that it is impossible to describe, he perceived that the very means he had taken to remove the difficulties of Sir Sidney Delaware and his family had, on the contrary, accumulated upon them a load of evils and distresses which his utmost apprehensions could never have anticipated.