When a bright object of this kind passes from your presence, there still lingers for a second or so a species of twilight, after which comes the black and starless night of deep despondency. Out of these dreamy delusive fits of low spirits I used to start with the sudden question, "What are you doing here, Kenny Dodd? Is it the father of a family ought to be living in this fashion? What tomfoolery is this? Is this kind of life instructive, intellectual, or even amusing? Is it respectable? I am not certain it is any one of the four. How long is it to continue, or where is it to end? Am I to go down to the grave under a false name, and are the Dodd family to put on mourning for Lord Harvey Bruce?"
One night that these thoughts had carried me to a high pitch of excitement, I was walking hurriedly to and fro in my room inveighing against the absurd folly which originally had embarked me on this journey. Anger had so far mastered my reason that I began to doubt everything and everybody. I grew sceptical that there were such people in the world as Mr. Gore Hampton or Lord Harvey Bruce, and in my heart I utterly rejected the existence of the "Princess." Up to this moment I had contented myself with hating her, as the first cause of all my calamities, but now I denied her a reality and a being. I did n't at first perceive what would come of my thus disturbing a great foundation-stone, and how inevitably the whole edifice would come tumbling down about my ears in consequence.
This terrible truth, however, now stared me in the face, and I sat down to consider it with a trembling spirit.
"May I come in?" whispered a low but well-known voice,—"may I come in?"
My first thoughts were to affect sleep and not answer, but I saw that there was an eagerness in the manner that would not brook denial, and answered, "Who 's there?"
"It is I, my dear friend," said Mrs. Gore Hampton, entering, and closing the door behind her. She came forward to where I was sitting despondingly on the side of the bed, and took a chair in front of me.
"What's the matter; you are surely not ill in reality?" asked she, tenderly.
"I believe I am," replied I. "They say in Ireland 'mocking is catching,' and, faith, I half suspect I 'm going to pay the price of my own deceitfulness."