 this instance
experienced. Every passion of his life was calculated to make him feel it more
acutely. He had repeatedly exerted the most uncommon energy and prudence to
prevent the misunderstanding between Mr. Tyrrel and himself from proceeding to
extremities; but in vain! It was closed with a catastrophe exceeding all that he
had feared, or that the most penetrating foresight could have suggested. To Mr.
Falkland disgrace was worse than death. The slightest breath of dishonour would
have stung him to the very soul. What must it have been with this complication
of ignominy, base, humiliating and public? Could Mr. Tyrrel have understood the
evil he inflicted, even he under all his circumstances of provocation could
hardly have perpetrated it. Mr. Falkland's mind was full of uproar like the war
of contending elements, and of such suffering as casts contempt on the
refinements of inventive cruelty. He wished for annihilation, to lie down in
eternal oblivion, in an insensibility, which compared with what he experienced
was scarcely less enviable than beatitude itself. Horror, detestation, revenge,
inexpressible longings to shake off the evil, and a persuasion that in this case
all effort was powerless, filled his soul even to bursting.
    One other event closed the transactions of this memorable evening. Mr.
Falkland was baffled of the vengeance that yet remained to him. Mr. Tyrrel was
found by some of the company dead in the street, having been murdered at the
distance of a few yards from the assembly house.
 

                                  Chapter XII

I shall endeavour to state the remainder of this narrative in the words of Mr.
Collins. The reader has already had occasion to perceive that Mr. Collins was a
man of no vulgar order; and his reflections on this subject were uncommonly
judicious.
    »This day was the crisis of Mr. Falkland's history. From hence took its
beginning that gloomy and unsociable melancholy of which he has since been the
victim. No two characters can be in certain respects more strongly contrasted,
than the Mr. Falkland of a date prior and subsequent to these events. Hitherto
he had been attended by a fortune perpetually prosperous. His mind was sanguine;
full of that undoubting confidence in its own powers which prosperity is
qualified to produce. Though the habits of his life were those of a serious and
sublime visionary, they were nevertheless full of chearfulness and tranquillity.
But from this moment his pride and the lofty adventurousness of his spirit were
effectually subdued. From an object of envy he was changed into an object of
compassion. Life, which hitherto no one had so exquisitely enjoyed, became a
burthen to him.
