Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs.
Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail.
His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the spectacle.

She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable.

It had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief.
She resolved to be sad no more.

She drank two glasses of champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with singing little amatory songs.
"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she said..