His duns had found him out,
and pursued him in wrath and alarm to England, and pestered him very
seriously indeed. He owed money beside to several of his brother
officers, and it was not pleasant to face them without a guinea. An evil
propensity, at which, as you remember, General Chattesworth hinted, had
grown amid his distresses, and the sting of self-reproach exasperated
him. Then there was his old love for Lilias Walsingham, and the pang of
rejection, and the hope of a strong passion sometimes leaping high and
bright, and sometimes nickering into ghastly shadows and darkness.
Indeed, he was by no means so companionable just now as in happier
times, and was sometimes confoundedly morose and snappish--for, as you
perceive, things had not gone well with him latterly. Still he was now
and then tolerably like his old self.
Toole, passing by, saw him in the window. Devereux smiled and nodded,
and the doctor stopped short at the railings, and grinned up in return,
and threw out his arms to express surprise, and then snapped his
fingers, and cut a little caper, as though he would say--'Now, you're
come back--we'll have fun and fiddling again.
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