After that last painful rebuff, he did not dare to go to her home, could
he find it, till he had secured from her, in some fashion, a word or
sign. "This," he said, "is certainly doubly absurd, since she does not
live in the city; but she is here to-day, I know,--she must be here";
and persisted in his endeavor,--persisted, naturally, in vain; and went
to bed, at last, exhausted; determined that to-morrow should find him on
his journey farther north, whatever wish might plead for delay, yet with
a final cry for her from the depths of his soul, as he stretched out his
solitary arm, ere sinking to restless sleep, and dreams of battle and
death--sleep unrefreshing, and dreams ill-omened; as he thought, again
and again, rousing himself from their hold, and looking out to the
night, impatient for the break of day.
When day broke he was unable to rise with its dawn. The effect of all
this tension on his already overtaxed nerves was to induce a fever in
the unhealed arm, which, though not painful, was yet sufficient to hold
him close prisoner for several days; a delay which chafed him, and which
filled his family at home with an intolerable anxiety, not that they
knew its cause,--_that_ would have been a relief,--but that they
conjectured another, to them infinitely worse than sickness or
suffering, bad and sorrowful as were these.
CHAPTER X
"_Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you.
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