Then an uneasy sensation that he had not been sufficiently kind to Rupert in his foolish love-troubles remorsefully seized him.

A half pathetic, half humorous picture of the miserable Rupert staggering under the double burden of his sleeping brother and a misplaced affection, or possibly abandoning the one or both in the nearest ditch in a reckless access of boyish frenzy and fleeing his home forever, rose before his eyes.

He seized his hat with the intention of seeking him--or forgetting him in some other occupation by the way.

For Mr.Ford had the sensitive conscience of many imaginative people; an unfailing monitor, it was always calling his whole moral being into play to evade it.
As he crossed the passage he came upon Mrs.Tripp hooded and elaborately attired in a white ball dress, which however did not, to his own fancy, become her as well as her ordinary costume.

He was passing her with a bow, when she said, with complacent consciousness of her appearance, "Aren't you going to the ball to-night ?" He remembered then that "an opening ball" at the Court-house was a part of the celebration.