_
_"He that has a victory lost
May discomfit yet a host;
And, it often doth befall,
He who conquers loses all."_
Christian, after sitting waiting in the study for a long hour, received a
message from her husband that he would not be home that night. He
had to take a sudden journey of twenty miles on some urgent affairs.
This was not unusual. Dr. Grey was one of those people whom all their
friends come to in any emergency, and the amount of other people's
business, especially painful business, which he was expected to
transact, and did transact, out of pure benevolence, was incalculable.
So his wife had to wait still. She submitted as to fatality, laid her head
on her pillow, and fell at once into that dull, stupid sleep which
mercifully comes to some people, and always came to her, in heavy
trouble. She did not wake from it till late in the following morning.
A great dread, like a great joy, always lies in ambush, ready to leap
upon us the instant we open our eyes. Had Miss Gascoigne known
what a horrible monster it was, like a tiger at her throat, which sprang
upon Christian when she waked that morning, she, even she, might
have felt remorseful for the pain she had caused. Yet perhaps she
would not.
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