"Rest, rest," said the battalion Sangrado, whom my condition rather perplexed; "don't worry yourself about anything. Rest, mental and bodily, alone can cure you." "It is a fine thing to talk," I muttered, while tossing on my pillow; for I was confined to bed in my dull little room, and for three days was left entirely to my own corroding thoughts. I had but one crumb of comfort, one lingering hope. She had not asked me to return _her_ ring, nor did I mean to do so, if possible. Once again my arm was slung in a black-silk scarf, which Estelle had insisted on making for me at Craigaderyn. Alas! would the joys of that time ever return to us again? I sent Evans, in uniform and not in my livery, to Whitchurch with the locket, after extracting my likeness therefrom; but he returned with it, saying that the lady had left the inn for London, having no doubt followed her husband. I knew not exactly of what I was accused--a _liaison_ of some kind apparently, of which the strongest proofs had been put before the Cressinghams. If, when able, I wrote to explain that the two meetings with Mrs. Guilfoyle were quite fortuitous, would Estelle believe me? Without inquiry or explanation, she had coldly and abruptly cast me off; and it was terrible that one I loved so well should think evil or with scorn of me. What would honest old Sir Madoc's view of the matter be, and what the kind and noble-hearted Winifred's, who loved me as a sister, if they heard of this story, whatever it was? Vengeance--swift, sudden, and sure--was what I panted for; and moments there were when I writhed under the laws that prevented me from discovering and beating to a jelly this fellow Guilfoyle, or even shooting him down like a mad dog, though I would gladly have risked my own life to punish him in the mode that was no longer approved of now in England; and I pictured to myself views of having him over in France, in the Bois de Boulogne, or on the level sands of Dunkirk, the spire of St. Eloi in the distance, the gray sky above us, the sea for a background, no sound in our ears but its chafing on the long strip of beach, and his villainous face covered by my levelled pistol at ten paces, or less--yea, even after I had let him have the first shot, by tossing or otherwise. And as these fierce thoughts burned within me, all the deeper and fiercer that they were futile and found no utterance, I glanced longingly at my sword, which hung on the wall, or handled my pistols with grim anticipative joy; and reflected on how many there are in this world who, in the wild sense of justice, or the longing for a just revenge on felons whom the laws protect, fear the police while they have no fear of God, even in this boasted age of civilisation; and I remembered a terrible _duel à la mort_ in which I had once borne a part in Germany.