Night and Morning, Book V

"_Vec_. Ye see what follows. _Duke_. O gentle sir! this shape again! " -- _The Chances_.

That evening Sidney Beaufort arrived in London. It is the nature of solitude to make passions calm on the surface -- agitated in the deeps. Sidney had placed his whole existence in one object. When the letter arrived that told him to hope no more, he was at first rather sensible of the terrible and dismal blank -- the "void abyss" -- to which all his future was suddenly changed, than roused to vehement and turbulent emotion. But Camilla's letter had, as we have seen, raised his courage and animated his heart. To the idea of her faith he still clung with the instinct of hope in the midst of despair. The tidings that she was absolutely betrothed to another, and in so short a time since her rejection of him, let loose from all restraint his darker and more tempestuous passions. In a state of mind bordering upon frenzy, he hurried to London -- to seek her -- to see her; with what intent -- what hope, if hope there were -- he himself could scarcely tell.