WYLDER'S HAJVD.
475
speaking or shedding a tear. Her looks alarmed the
nurse, who, with Rachel's help, persuaded her to leave
the room. And then came one of those wild scenes
which close such tragedies — paroxysms of despair and
frantic love, over that worthless young man who lay dead
below stairs; such as strike us sometimes with a desolate
scepticism, and make us fancy that all affection is illusion,
and perishable with the deceits and vanities of earth.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
WE TAKE LEAVE OP OUR FRIENDS.
The story which, in his last interview with Lord Chel-
ford, Stanley Lake had related, was, probably, as near
the truth as he was capable of telling.
On the night when Mark Wylder had left Bran-
don in his company they had some angry talk; Lake's
object being to induce Mark to abandon his engagement
with Dorcas Brandon. He told Stanley that he would
not give up Dorcas, but that he, Lake, must fight him,
and go to Boulogne for the purpose, and they should ar-
range matters so that one or other must fall. Lake
laughed quietly at the proposition, and Mark retorted by
telling him he would so insult him, if he declined, as to
compel a meeting. When they reached that lonely path
near the flight of stone steps, Stanley distinctly threaten-
ed his companion with a disclosure of the scandalous in-
cident in the card-room of the club, which he afterwards
related, substantially as it had happened, to Jos Larkin.
When he took this decisive step, Lake's nerves were
strung to a high pitch of excitement. Mark Wylder, he