of pity—could tell what agony of mind, what blighted thoughts, what unavailing sorrow, were involved in that sad parting!
"See," cried Nicholas eagerly, as he looked from the coach window, "they are at the corner of the lane still! And now there's Kate—poor Kate, whom you said you couldn't bear to say good bye to—waving her handkerchief. Don't go without one gesture of farewell to Kate!"
"I cannot make it!" cried his trembling companion, falling back in his seat and covering his eyes. "Do you see her now? Is she there still?"
"Yes, yes!" said Nicholas earnestly. "There, she waves her hand again. I have answered it for you—and now they are out of sight. Do not give way so bitterly, dear friend, do not. You will meet them all again."
He whom he thus encouraged, raised his withered hands and clasped them fervently together.
"In heaven—I humbly pray to God—in heaven!"
It sounded like the prayer of a broken heart.
CHAPTER LVI.
RALPH NICKLEBY, BAFFLED BY HIS NEPHEW IN HIS LATE DESIGN, HATCHES A SCHEME OF RETALIATION WHICH ACCIDENT SUGGESTS TO HIM, AND TAKES INTO HIS COUNSELS A TRIED AUXILIARY.
The course which these adventures shape out for themselves and imperatively call upon the historian to observe, now demands that they should revert to the point they attained previous to the commencement of the last chapter, when Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride were left together in the house where death had so suddenly reared his dark and heavy banner.
With clenched hands, and teeth ground together so firm and tight that no locking of the jaws could for the time have fixed and riveted them more securely, Ralph stood for some minutes in the same attitude in which he had last addressed his nephew: breathing heavily, but as rigid and motionless in other respects as if he had been a brazen statue. After a time, he began by slow degrees, as a man rousing himself from heavy slumber, to relax. For a moment he shook his clasped fist stealthily and savagely towards the door by which Nicholas had disappeared, and then thrusting it into his breast as if to repress by force even this show of passion, turned round and confronted the less hardy usurer, who had not yet risen from the ground.
The cowering wretch, who still shook in every limb, and whose few grey hairs trembled and quivered on his head with abject dismay, tottered to his feet as he met Ralph's eye, and shielding his face with
