“Do you? Then, by Heaven! you have a greater confidence in me than I have in myself. I believe I was more than two parts drunk when I did it, but doubtless the thought will sober me when I awake to-morrow morning; till when, I do not mean to think of it.”
“You have not eaten, I 'm sure.”
“I cannot eat just yet, Grace; give me a cup of tea, and leave me. I shall be better alone for a while.”
CHAPTER XI. A REMITTANCE
“A letter,—a long letter from Alfred,” said Layton's wife, as she knocked at his door on the following morning. “It has been lying for four days at the office in Coleraine. Only think, Herbert, and I fretting and fretting over his silence.”
“Is he well?” asked he, half gruffly.
“Quite well, and so happy; in the midst of kind friends, and enjoying himself, as he says he thought impossible when absent from his home. Pray read it, Herbert. It will do you infinite good to see how cheerfully he writes.”
“No, no; it is enough that I know the boy is well. As to being happy, it is the affair of an hour, or a day, with the luckiest of us.”
“There are so many kind messages to you, and so many anxious inquiries about the laboratory. But you must read them. And then there is a bank order he insists upon your having. Poor fellow! the first money he has ever earned—”