"I've really won? It a'n't a joke or a dream?" inquired Titmouse, with quickly increasing excitement, and a joyous expression bursting over his features, which became suddenly flushed.
"A joke?—the best you'll ever have. A dream?—that will last your life. Thank God, Mr. Titmouse, the battle's ours; we've defeated all their villany!"
"Tol de rol! Tol de rol! Tol de lol, lol, lol, rido!—Ah," he added in a loud truculent tone, as Lord De la Zouch and Mr. Aubrey slowly passed him—"done for you now—'pon my life!—turned the tables!—that for you!" said he, snapping his fingers; but I need hardly say that he did so with perfect impunity, as far as those two gentlemen were concerned, who were so absorbed with the grievous event which had just happened, as scarcely to be aware of their being addressed at all.
"Aubrey, it's against you—all is lost; the verdict is for the plaintiff!" said Lord De la Zouch, in a hurried agitated whisper, as he grasped the hand of Mr. Aubrey, whom he had quitted for an instant to hear the verdict pronounced. Mr. Aubrey for some moments spoke not.
"God's will be done!" at length said he, in a low tone, or rather in a faint murmur. More than a dozen gentlemen, who came crowding out, grasped his hand with fervent energy.
"God bless you, Aubrey! God bless you!" said several voices, their speakers wringing his hands with great vehemence as they spoke.
"Let us go"—said Lord De la Zouch, putting Mr. Aubrey's arm in his own, and leading him away from a scene of distressing excitement, too powerful for his exhausted feelings.
"I am nothing of a fatalist," said Mr. Aubrey, after a considerable pause, during which they had quitted the Castle-gates, and his feelings had recovered from the shock which they had just before suffered;—"I am nothing of a fatalist, but I ought not to feel the least surprise at this issue, for I have long had a settled conviction that such would be the issue. For some time before I had the least intimation of the commencement of these proceedings, I was oppressed by a sense of impending calamity"——
"Well, that may be so; but it does not follow that the mischief is finally done."