He had not been well that day, and he now felt worse than before. The
pain in his head had given place to a strange sense of dilation, and
there was a silent, confused riot in his fevered brain, which seemed
to him like the incipience of insanity. Striving to divert his mind
from what had passed, by reflection on other themes, he could not hold
his thoughts; they came teeming but dim, and slipped and fell away;
and only the one circumstance of his recent cruelty, mixed with
remembrance of George Feval, recurred and clung with vivid persistence.
This tortured him. Sitting there, with arms tightly interlocked, he
resolved to wrench his mind down by sheer will upon other things; and
a savage pleasure at what at once seemed success, took possession of
him. In this mood, he heard soft footsteps and the rustle of festal
garments on the stairs, and had a fierce complacency in being able to
apprehend clearly that it was his wife and daughter going out to the
party. In a moment he heard the controlled and even voice of Mrs.
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