Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/258

246 various little commissions for my mother and Rose, with very laudable exactitude, considering the different circumstances of the case. In returning home, I was troubled with sundry misgivings about the unfortunate Lawrence. The question, what if I should find him lying, still on the damp earth, fairly dying of cold and exhaustion—or already stark and chill? thrust itself most unpleasantly upon my mind, and the appalling possibility pictured itself with painful vividness to my imagination as I approached the spot where I had left him. But no; thank Heaven, both man and horse were gone, and nothing was left to witness against me but two objects—unpleasant enough in themselves, to be sure, and presenting a very ugly, not to say murderous, appearance—in one place, the hat saturated with rain and coated with mud, indented and broken above the brim by that villanous whip-handle; in another, the crimson handkerchief, soaking in a deeply tinctured pool of water—for much rain had fallen in the interim.