"You would go right through it and come out at the other side," persists the Boodie, nothing daunted.
"Like the Thames Tunnel. How nice!" says Dicky Browne, amiably.
"Well, you can't live on it now, anyway," says the Boodie, putting the last bit of the jelly island into her small mouth.
"No, no, indeed," says Dicky, shaking his head with all the appearance of one sunk in the very deepest dejection.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"I do perceive here a divided duty."—Othello.
Jealousy is the keenest, the most selfish, the most poignant of all sufferings. "It is," says Milton, "the injured lover's hell." This monster having now seized upon Stephen, is holding him in a close embrace and is swiftly crushing within him all hope and peace and joy.
To watch Dulce day after day in her cousin's society, to mark her great eyes grow brighter when he comes, is now more than he can endure. To find himself second where he had been first is intolerable to him, and a shrinking feeling that warns him he is being watched and commented upon by all the members of the Blount household, renders him at times half mad with rage and wounded pride.
Not that Dulce slights him in any way, or is cold to him, or gives him to understand, even indirectly, that she would gladly know her engagement at an end. She is both kind and gentle—much more so than before—but any doubt he had ever entertained about her having a real affection for him has now become a certainty.