He did not go to Berkeley Square, as Mr. Tottenham had recommended, but to his old lodgings, where he found a bed with difficulty, and where once more his two lives seemed to meet in sharp encounter. But his head by this time was too full of schemes for to-morrow to permit of any personal speculation; he was far, as yet, from seeing any end to his undertaking, and it was impossible to tell what journeys, what researches might be still before him.

CHAPTER XI.

In the Depths.

Next morning he went first to his old lawyer, in whom he had confidence, and having copied the certificate, carefully changing the names, submitted it to him. Mr. Parchemin declared that he knew nothing of Scotch law, but shook his head, and hoped there was nothing very unpleasant in the circumstances, declaring vehemently that it was a shame and disgrace that such snares should be spread for the unwary on the other side of the border. Was it a disgrace that Arthur Arden should not have been protected in Scotland, as in England, from the quick-wittedness of the girl whom he had already cheated and meant to betray? Edgar felt that there might be something to be said on both sides of the question, as he left his copy in Mr. Parchemin’s hands, who undertook to consult a Scotch legal authority on the question; then he went upon his other business. I need not follow him through his manifold and perplexing inquiries, or inform the reader how he was sent from office to office, and from secretary to secretary, or with what loss of time and patience his quest was accompanied. After several days’ work, however, he ascertained that the chapel in Hart Street had indeed been licensed, but only used once or twice for marriages, and that no record of any such marriage as that which he was in search of could be found anywhere. A stray record of a class-meeting which Emma Lockwood had been admonished for levity of demeanour, was the sole mention of her to be found; and though the officials admitted a certain carelessness in the preservation of books belonging to an extinct chapel, they declared it to be impossible that such a fact could have been absolutely ignored. There was, indeed, a rumour in the denomination that a local preacher had been found to have taken upon himself to perform a marriage, for which he had been severely reprimanded; but as he had been possessed of no authority to make such a proceeding legal, no register had been made of the fact, and only the reprimanded was inscribed on the books of the community. This was the only opening for even a conjecture as to the truth of Miss Lockwood’s first story. If the second could only have been dissipated as easily!

Edgar’s inquiries among the Wesleyan authorities lasted, as I have said, several days, and caused him more fatigue of limb and of mind than it is easy to express. He went to Tottenham’s—where, indeed, he showed himself every day, getting more and more irritated with the Entertainment, and all its preparations—as soon as he had ascertained beyond doubt that the marriage at Hart Street Chapel was fictitious. Miss Lockwood, he was informed, was an invalid, but would see him in the young ladies’ dining-room, where, accordingly, he found her, looking sharper, and whiter, and more worn than ever. He told her his news quietly, with a natural pity for the woman deceived; a gleam of sudden light shone in her eyes.

“I told you so,” she said, triumphantly; “now didn’t I tell you so? He wanted to take me in—I felt it from the very first; but he hadn’t got to do with a fool, as he thought. I was even with him for that.”

“I have written to find out if your Scotch witnesses are alive,” said Edgar.

“Alive!—why shouldn’t they be alive, like I am, and like he is?” she cried, with feverish irritability. “Folks of our ages don’t die!—what are you thinking of? And if they were dead, what would it matter?—there’s their names as good as themselves. Ah! I didn’t botch my business any more than he botched his. You’ll find it’s all right.”

“I hope you are better,” Edgar said, with a compassion that was all the more profound because the object of it neither deserved, nor would have accepted it.

“Better—oh! thank you, I am quite well,” she said lightly—“only a bit of a cold. Perhaps on the whole it’s as well I’m not going to sing to-night; a cold is so bad for one’s voice. Good-bye, Mr. Earnshaw. We’ll meet at the old gentleman’s turnout to-night.”

And she waved her hand, dismissing poor Edgar, who left her with a warmer sense of disgust, and dislike than had ever moved his friendly bosom before. And yet it was in this creature’s interests he was working, and against Clare! Mr. Tottenham caught him on his way out, to hand him a number of letters which had arrived for him, and to call for his advice in the final preparations. The public had been shut out of the hall in which the Entertainment was to be, on pretence of alterations.

“Three more resignations,” Mr. Tottenham said, who was feverish and harassed, and looked like a man at the end of his patience. “Heaven be praised, it will be over to-night? Come early, Earnshaw, if you can spare the time, and stand by me. If any of the performers get cross, and refuse to perform, what shall I do?”

“Let them!” cried Edgar; “ungrateful fools, after all your kindness.”

Edgar was too much harassed and annoyed himself to be perfectly rational in his judgments.

“Don’t let us be uncharitable,” said Mr. Tottenham; “have they perhaps, after all, much reason for gratitude? Is it not my own crotchet I am carrying out, in spite of all obstacles? But it will be a lesson—I think it will be a lesson,” he added. “And, Earnshaw, don’t fail me to-night.”

Edgar went straight from the shop to Mr. Parchemin’s, to receive the opinion of the eminent Scotch law authority in respect to the marriage certificate. He had written to Robert Campbell, at Loch Arroch Head, suggesting that inquiries might be made about the persons who signed it, and had heard from him that morning that the landlady of the inn was certainly to be found, and that she perfectly remembered having put her name to the paper. The waiter was no longer there, but could be easily laid hands upon. There was accordingly no hope except in the Scotch lawyer, who might still make waste paper of the certificate. Edgar found Mr. Parchemin hot and red, after a controversy with this functionary.

“He laughs at my indignation,” said the old lawyer. “Well, I suppose if one did not heat one’s self in argument, what he says might have some justice in it. He says innocent men that let women alone, and innocent women that behave as they ought to do, will never get any harm from the Scotch marriage law; and that it’s always a safeguard for a poor girl that may have been led astray without meaning it. He says—well, I see you’re impatient—though how such an anomaly can ever be suffered so near to civilization! Well, he says it’s as good a marriage as if it had been done in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s all the comfort I’ve got to give you. I hope it hasn’t got anything directly to say to you.”

“Thanks,” said Edgar, faintly; “it has to do with some—very dear friends of mine. I could scarcely feel it more deeply if it concerned myself.”

“It is a disgrace to civilization!” cried the lawyer—“it is a subversion of every honest principle. You young men ought to take warning—”

“—To do a villainy of this kind, when we mean to do it, out of Scotland?” said Edgar, “or we may find ourselves the victims instead of the victors? Heaven forbid that I should do anything to save a scoundrel from his just deserts!”

“But I thought you were interested—deeply interested——”

“Not for him, the cowardly blackguard!” cried Edgar, excited beyond self-control.

He turned away from the place, holding the lawyer’s opinion, for which he had spent a large part of his little remaining stock of money, clutched in his hand. A feverish, momentary sense, almost of gratification, that Arden should have been thus punished, possessed him—only for a moment. He hastened to the club, where he could sit quiet and think it over. He had not been able even to consider his own business, but had thrust his letters into his pocket without looking at them.

When he found himself alone, or almost alone, in a corner of the library, he covered his face with his hands, and yielded to the crushing influence of this last certainty. Clare was no longer an honoured matron, the possessor of a well-recognized position, the mother of children of whom she was proud, the wife of a man whom at least she had once loved, and who, presumably, had done nothing to make her hate and scorn him. God help her! What was she now? What was her position to be? She had no relations to fall back upon, or to stand by her in her trouble, except himself, who was no relation—only poor Edgar, her loving brother, bound to her by everything but blood; but, alas! he knew that in such emergencies blood is everything, and other ties count for so little. The thought made his heart sick; and he could not be silent, could not hide it from her, dared not shut up this secret in his own mind, as he might have done almost anything else that affected her painfully. There was but one way, but one step before him now.

His letters tumbled out of his pocket as he drew out Miss Lockwood’s original paper, and he tried to look at them, by way of giving his overworn mind a pause, and that he might be the better able to choose the best way of carrying out the duty now before him. These letters were—some of them, at least—answers to those which he had written in the excitement and happy tumult of his mind, after Lady Mary’s unintentional revelation. He read them as through a mist; their very meaning came dimly upon him, and he could with difficulty realize the state of his feelings when, all glowing with the prospect of personal happiness, and the profound and tender exultation with which he found himself to be still beloved, he had written these confident appeals to the kindness of his friends. Most likely, had he read the replies with a disengaged mind, they would have disappointed him bitterly, with a dreariness of downfall proportioned to his warmth of hope. But in his present state of mind every sound around him was muffled, every blow softened. One nail strikes out another, say the astute Italians. The mind is not capable of two profound and passionate preoccupations at once. He read them with subdued consciousness, with a veil before his eyes. They were all friendly, and some were warmly cordial. “What can we do for you?” they all said. “If you could take a mastership, I have interest at more than one public school; but, alas! I suppose you did not even take your degree in England,” one wrote to him. “If you knew anything about land, or had been trained to the law,” said another, “I might have got you a land agency in Ireland, a capital thing for a man of energy and courage; but then I fear you are no lawyer, and not much of an agriculturist.” “What can you do, my dear fellow?” said a third, more cautiously. “Think what you are most fit for—you must know best yourself—and let me know, and I will try all I can do.”

Edgar laughed as he bundled them all back into his pocket. What was he most fit for? To be an amateur detective, and find out secrets that broke his heart. A dull ache for his own disappointment (though his mind was not lively enough to feel disappointed) seemed to add to the general despondency, the lowered life and oppressed heart of which he had been conscious without this. But then what had he to do with personal comfort or happiness? In the first place there lay this tremendous passage before him—this revelation to be made to Clare.

It was late in the afternoon before he could nerve himself to write the indispensable letter, from which he felt it was cowardly to shrink. It was not a model of composition, though it gave him a great deal of trouble. This is what he said:—

He felt that the outburst at the end was injudicious, but could not restrain the ebullition of feeling. If he could but be allowed to manage it quietly, to have her misery broken to Clare without any interposition of the world’s scorn or pity. She was the one utterly guiltless, but it was she who would be most exposed to animadversion; he felt this, with his heart bleeding for his sister. If he had but had the privilege of a brother—if he could have gone to her, and drawn her gently away, and provided home and sympathy for her, before the blow had fallen! But neither he nor anyone could do this, for Clare was not the kind of being to make close friends. She reserved her love for the few who belonged to her, and had little or none to expend on strangers. Did she still think of him as one belonging to her, or was his recollection altogether eclipsed, blotted out from her mind? He began half a dozen letters to Clare herself, asking if she still thought of him, if she would allow him to remember that he was once her brother, with a humility which he could not have shown had she been as happy and prosperous as all the world believed her to be. But after he had written these letters, one after another, retouching a phrase here, and an epithet there, which was too weak or too strong for his excited fancy, and lingering over her name with tears in his eyes, he destroyed them all. Until he heard from her husband, he did not feel that he could venture to write to his sister. His sister!—his poor, forlorn, ruined, solitary sister, rich as she was, and surrounded by all things advantageous! a wife, and yet no wife; the mother of children whose birth would be their shame! Edgar rose up from where he was writing in the intolerable pang of this thought—he could not keep still while it flashed through his mind. Clara, the proudest, the purest, the most fastidious of women—how could she bear it? He said to himself that it was impossible—impossible—that she must die of it! There was no way of escape for her. It would kill her, and his was the hand which had to give the blow.

In this condition, with such thoughts running over in his vexed brain, to go back to the shop, and find poor Mr. Tottenham wrestling among the difficulties which, poor man, were overwhelming him, with dark lines of care under his eyes, and his face haggard with anxiety—imagine, dear reader, what it was! He could have laughed at the petty trouble; yet no one could laugh at the pained face, the kind heart wounded, the manifest and quite overwhelming trouble of the philanthropist.

“I don’t even know yet whether they will keep to their engagements; and we are all at sixes and sevens, and the company will begin to arrive in an hour or two!” cried poor Mr. Tottenham. Edgar’s anxieties were so much more engrossing and terrible that to have a share in these small ones did him good; and he was so indifferent that he calmed everybody, brought the unruly performers back to their senses, and thrust all the arrangements on by the sheer carelessness he felt as to whether they were ready or not. “Who cares about your play?” he said to Watson, who came to pour out his grievances. “Do you think the Duchess of Middlemarch is so anxious to hear you? They will enjoy themselves a great deal better chatting to each other.”

This brought Mr. Watson and his troupe to their senses, as all Mr. Tottenham’s agitated remonstrances had not brought them. Edgar did not care to be in the way of the fine people when they arrived. He got a kind word from Lady Mary, who whispered to him, “How ill you are looking! You must tell us what it is, and let us help you;” for this kind woman found it hard to realise that there were things in which the support of herself and her husband would be but little efficacious; and he had approached Lady Augusta, as has been recorded, with some wistful, hopeless intention of recommending Clare to her, in case of anything that might happen. But Lady Augusta had grown so pale at the sight of him, and had thrown so many uneasy glances round her, that Edgar withdrew, with his heart somewhat heavy, feeling his burden rather more than he could conveniently bear. He had gone and hid himself in the library, trying to read, and hearing far off the din of applause—the distant sound of voices. The noise of the visitors’ feet approaching had driven him from that refuge, when Mr. Tottenham, in high triumph, led his guests through his huge establishment. Edgar, dislodged, and not caring to put himself in the way of further discouragement, chose this moment to give his message to Phil, and strayed away from sound and light into the retired passages, when that happened to him in his time of extremity which it is now my business to record.

CHAPTER XII.

A New Event.

Heaven help him!—he did not advance nor take her hands, which she held out, kept back by his honour and promise—till he saw that her eyes were full of tears, that her lips were quivering, unable to articulate anything more, and that her figure swayed slightly, as if tottering. Then all that was superficial went to the winds. He took her back through the half-lighted passage, supporting her tenderly, to Mr. Tottenham’s room. The door closed behind them, and Gussy turned to him with swimming eyes—eyes running over with tears and wistful happiness. She could not speak. She let him hold her, and looked up at him, all her heart in her face. Poor Edgar was seized upon at the same moment, all unprepared as he was, by that sudden gush of long-restrained feeling which carries all before it. “Is this how it is to be?” he said, no louder than a whisper, holding her fast and close, grasping her slender arm, as if she might still flee from him, or revolt from his touch. But Gussy had no mind to escape. Either she had nothing to say, or she was still too much shaken to attempt to say it. She let her head drop like a flower overcharged, and leaned on him and fell a-sobbing—fell on his neck, as the Bible says, though Gussy’s little figure fell short of that, and she only leaned as high as she could reach, resting there like a child. If ever a man came at a step out of purgatory, or worse, into Paradise, it was this man. Utterly alone half an hour ago, now companied so as all the world could not add to him. He did not try to stop her sobbing, but bent his head down upon hers, and I think for one moment let his own heart expand into something which was like a sob too—an inarticulate utterance of all this sudden rapture, unexpected, unlooked for, impossible as it was.

I do not know which was the first to come to themselves. It must have been Gussy, whose sobs had relieved her soul. She stirred within his arm, and lifted her head, and tried to withdraw from him.

“Not yet, not yet,” said Edgar. “Think how long I have wanted you, how long I have yearned for you; and that I have no right to you even now.”

“Right!” said Gussy, softly—“you have the only right—no one can have any right but you.”

“Is it so?—is it so? Say it again,” said Edgar. “Say that I am not a selfish hound, beguiling you; but that you will have it so. Say you will have it so! What I will is not the question—it is your will that is my law.”

“Do you know what you are saying—or have you turned a little foolish?” said the Gussy of old, with a laugh which was full of the tears with which her eyes were still shining and bright; and then she paused, and looking up at him, blushing, hazarded an inquiry—“Are you in love with me now?” she said.

“Now; and for how long?—three years—every day and all day long!” cried Edgar. “It could not do you any harm so far off. But I should not have dared to think of you so much if I had ever hoped for this.”

“Do not hold me so tight now,” said Gussy. “I shall not run away. Do you remember the last time—ah! we were not in love with each other then.”

“But loved each other—the difference is not very great,” he said, looking at her wistfully, making his eyes once more familiar with her face.

“Ah! there is a great difference,” said Gussy. “We were only, as you said, fond of each other; I began to feel it when you were gone. Tell me all that has happened since,” she said, suddenly—“everything! You said you had been coming to ask me that dreadful morning. We have belonged to each other ever since; and so much has happened to you. Tell me everything; I have a right to know.”

“Nothing has happened to me but the best of all things,” said Edgar, “and the worst. I have broken my word; I promised to your mother never to put myself in the way; I have disgraced myself, and I don’t care. And this has happened to me,” he said low in her ear, “my darling! Gussy, you are sure you know what you are doing? I am poor, ruined, with no prospects for the moment——”

“Don’t, please,” said Gussy, throwing back her head with the old pretty movement. “I suppose you don’t mean to be idle and lazy, and think me a burden; and I can make myself very useful, in a great many ways. Why should I have to think what I am doing more than I ought to have done three years ago, when you came to Thornleigh that morning? I had done my thinking then.”

“And, please God, you shall not repent of it!” cried the happy young man—“you shall not repent it, if I can help it. But your mother will not think so, darling; she will upbraid me with keeping you back—from better things.”

“That will be to insult me!” cried Gussy, flaming with hot, beautiful anger and shame. “Edgar, do you think I should have walked into your arms like this, not waiting to be asked, if I had not thought all this time that we have been as good as married these three years? Oh! what am I saying?” cried poor Gussy, overwhelmed with sudden confusion. It had seemed so natural, so matter-of-fact a statement to her—until she had said the words, and read a new significance in the glow of delight which flashed up in his eyes.

Is it necessary to follow this couple further into the foolishness of their mutual talk?—it reads badly on paper, and in cold blood. They had forgotten what the hour was, and most other things, when Mr. Tottenham, very weary, but satisfied, came suddenly into the room, with his head full of the Entertainment. His eyes were more worn than ever, but the lines of care under them had melted away, and a fatigued, half-imbecile smile of pleasure was hanging about his face. He was too much worn out to judge anyone—to be hard upon anyone that night. Fatigue and relief of mind had affected him like a genial, gentle intoxication of the spirit. He stopped short, startled, and perhaps shocked for the moment, when Edgar, and that white little figure beside him, rose hastily from the chairs, which had been so very near each other. I am afraid that, for the first moment, Mr. Tottenham felt a chill of dread that it was one of his own young ladies from the establishment. He did not speak, and they did not speak for some moments. Then, with an attempt at severity, Mr. Tottenham said,

“Gussy, is it possible? How should you have come here?”

“Oh! uncle, forgive us!” said Gussy, taking Edgar’s arm, and clinging to it, “and speak to mamma for us. I accepted him three years ago, Uncle Tom. He is the same man—or, rather, a far nicer man,” and here she gave a closer clasp to his arm, and dropped her voice for the moment, “only poor. Only poor!—does that make all the difference? Can you tell me any reason, Uncle Tottenham, why I should give him up, now he has come back?”

“My dear,” said Mr. Tottenham, alarmed yet conciliatory, “your mother—no, I don’t pretend I see it—your mother, Gussy, must be the best judge. Earnshaw, my dear fellow, was it not understood between us? I don’t blame you. I don’t say I wouldn’t have done the same; but was it not agreed between us? You should have given me fair warning, and she should never have come here.”

“I gave Lady Mary fair warning,” said Edgar, who felt himself ready at this moment to confront the whole world. “I promised to deny myself; but no power in the world should make me deny Gussy anything she pleased; and this is what she pleases, it appears,” he said, looking down upon her with glowing eyes. “A poor thing, sir, but her own—and she chooses it. I can give up my own will, but Gussy shall have her will, if I can get it for her. I gave Lady Mary fair warning; and then we met unawares.”

“And it was all my doing, please, uncle,” said Gussy, with a little curtsey. She was trembling with happiness, with agitation, with the mingled excitement and calm of great emotion; but still she could not shut out from herself the humour of the situation—“it was all my doing, please.”

“Ah! I see how it is,” said Mr. Tottenham. “You have been carried off, Earnshaw, and made a prey of against your will. Don’t ask me for my opinion, yes or no. Take what good you can of to-night, you will have a pleasant waking up, I promise you, to-morrow morning. The question is, in the meantime, how are you to get home? Every soul is gone, and my little brougham is waiting, with places for two only, at the door. Send that fellow away, and I’ll take you home to your mother.”

But poor Gussy had very little heart to send her recovered lover away. She clung to his arm, with a face like an April day, between smiles and tears.

“He says quite true. We shall have a dreadful morning,” she said, disconsolately. “When can you come, Edgar? I will say nothing till you come.”

As Gussy spoke there came suddenly back upon Edgar a reflection of all he had to do. Life had indeed come back to him all at once, her hands full of thorns and roses piled together. He fixed the time of his visit to Lady Augusta next morning, as he put Gussy into Mr. Tottenham’s brougham, and setting off himself at a great pace, arrived at Berkeley Square as soon as they did, and attended her to the well-known door. Gussy turned round on the threshold of the house where he had been once so joyfully received, but where his appearance now, he knew, would be regarded with horror and consternation, and waved her hand to him as he went away. But having done so, I am afraid her courage failed, and she stole away rapidly upstairs, and took refuge in her own room, and even put herself within the citadel of her bed.

“I came home with Uncle Tottenham in his brougham,” she said to Ada, who, half-alarmed, paid her a furtive visit, “and I am so tired and sleepy!”

Poor Gussy, she was safe for that night, but when morning came what was to become of her? So far from being sleepy, I do not believe that, between the excitement, the joy, and the terror, she closed her eyes that whole night.

Mr. Tottenham, too, got out of the brougham at Lady Augusta’s door; his own house was on the other side of the Square. He sent the carriage away, and took Edgar’s arm, and marched him solemnly along the damp pavement.

“Earnshaw, my dear fellow,” he said, in the deepest of sepulchral tones, “I am afraid you have been very imprudent. You will have a mauvais quart d’heure to-morrow.”

“I know it,” said Edgar, himself feeling somewhat alarmed, in the midst of his happiness.

“I am afraid—you ought not to have let her carry you off your feet in this way; you ought to have been wise for her and yourself too; you ought to have avoided any explanation. Mind, I don’t say that my feelings go with that sort of thing; but in common prudence—in justice to her——”

“Justice to her!” cried Edgar. “If she has been faithful for three years, do you think she is likely to change now? All that time not a word has passed between us; but you told me yourself she would not hear of—anything; that she spoke of retiring from the world. Would that be wiser or more prudent? Look here, nobody in the world has been so kind to me as you. I want you to understand me. A man may sacrifice his own happiness, but has he any right to sacrifice the woman he loves? It sounds vain, does it not?—but if she chooses to think this her happiness, am I to contradict her? I will do all that becomes a man,” cried Edgar, unconsciously adopting, in his excitement, the well-known words, “but do you mean to say it is a man’s duty to crush, and balk, and stand out against the woman he loves?”

“You are getting excited,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Speak lower, for heaven’s sake! Earnshaw; don’t let poor Mary hear of it to-night.”

There was something in the tone in which he said poor Mary, with a profound comic pathos, as if his wife would be the chief sufferer, which almost overcame Edgar’s gravity. Poor Mr. Tottenham was weak with his own sufferings, and with the blessed sense that he had got over them for the moment.

“What a help you were to me this afternoon,” he said, “though I daresay your mind was full of other things. Nothing would have settled into place, and we should have had a failure instead of a great success but for you. You think it was a great success? Everybody said so. And your poor lady, Earnshaw—your—friend—what of her? Is it as bad as you feared?”

“It is as bad as it is possible to be,” said Edgar, suddenly sobered. “I must ask further indulgence from you, I fear, to see a very bad business to an end.”

“You mean, a few days’ freedom? Yes, certainly; perhaps it might be as well in every way. And money—are you sure you have money? Perhaps it is just as well you did not come to the Square, though they were ready for you. Do you come with me to-night?”

“I am at my old rooms,” said Edgar. “Now that the Entertainment is over, I shall not return till my business is done—or not then, if you think it best.”

“Nothing of the sort!” cried his friend—“only till it is broken to poor Mary,” he added, once more lachrymose. “But, Earnshaw, poor fellow, I feel for you. You’ll let me know what Augusta says?”

And Mr. Tottenham opened his door with his latch-key, and crept upstairs like a criminal. He was terrified for his wife, to whom he felt this bad news must be broken with all the precaution possible; and though he could not prevent his own thoughts from straying into a weak-minded sympathy with the lovers, he did not feel at all sure that she would share his sentiments.

“Mary, at heart, is a dreadful little aristocrat,” he said to himself, as he lingered in his dressing-room to avoid her questions; not knowing that Lady Mary’s was the rash hand which had set this train of inflammables first alight.

Next morning—ah! next morning, there was the rub!—Edgar would have to face Lady Augusta, and Gussy her mother, and Mr. Tottenham, who felt himself by this time an accomplice, his justly indignant wife; besides that the latter unfortunate gentleman had also to go to the shop, and face the resignations offered to himself, and deadly feuds raised amongst his “assistants,” by the preliminaries of last night. In the meantime, all the culprits tried hard not to think of the terrible moment that awaited them, and I think the lovers succeeded. Lovers have the best of it in such emergencies; the enchanted ground of recollection and imagination to which they can return being more utterly severed from the common world than any other refuge.

The members of the party who remained longest up were Lady Augusta and Ada, who sat over the fire in the mother’s bed-room, and discussed everything with a generally satisfied and cheerful tone in their communings.

“Gussy came home with Uncle Tottenham in his brougham,” said Ada. “She has gone to bed. She was out in her district a long time this morning, and I think she is very tired to-night.”

“Oh, her district!” cried Lady Augusta. “I like girls to think of the poor, my dear—you know I do—I never oppose anything in reason; but why Gussy should work like a slave, spoiling her hands and complexion, and exposing herself in all weathers for the sake of her district! And it is not as if she had no opportunities. I wish you would speak to her, Ada. She ought to marry, if it were only for the sake of the boys; and why she is so obstinate, I cannot conceive.”

“Mamma, don’t say so—you know well enough why,” said Ada quietly. “I don’t say you should give in to her; but at least you know.”

“Well, I must say I think my daughters have been hard upon me,” said Lady Augusta, with a sigh—“even you, my darling—though I can’t find it in my heart to blame you. But, to change the subject, did you notice, Ada, how well Harry was looking? Dear fellow! he has got over his little troubles with your father. Tottenham’s has done him good; he always got on well with Mary and your odd, good uncle. Harry is so good-hearted and so simple-minded, he can get on with anybody; and I quite feel that I had a good inspiration,” said Lady Augusta, with a significant nod of her head, “when I sent him there. I am sure it has been for everybody’s good.”

“In what way, mamma?” said Ada, who was not at all so confident in Harry’s powers.

“Well, dear, he has been on the spot,” said Lady Augusta; “he has exercised an excellent influence. When poor Edgar, poor dear fellow, came up to me to-night, I could not think what to do for the best, for I expected Gussy to appear any moment; and even Mary and Beatrice, had they seen him, would have made an unnecessary fuss. But he took the hint at my first glance. I can only believe it was dear Harry’s doing, showing him the utter hopelessness—Poor fellow!” said Lady Augusta, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. “Oh! my dear, how inscrutable are the ways of Providence! Had things been ordered otherwise, what a comfort he might have been to us—what a help!”

“When you like him so well yourself, mamma,” said gentle Ada, “you should understand poor Gussy’s feelings, who was always encouraged to think of him—till the change came.”

“That is just what I say, dear,” said Lady Augusta; “if things had been ordered otherwise! We can’t change the arrangements of Providence, however much we may regret them. But at least it is a great comfort about dear Harry. How well he was looking!—and how kind and affectionate! I almost felt as if he were a boy again, just come from school, and so glad to see his people. It was by far the greatest pleasure I had to-night.”

And so this unsuspecting woman went to bed. She had a good night, for she was not afraid of the morrow, dismal as were the tidings it was fated to bring to her maternal ear.

CHAPTER XIII.

Berkeley Square.

They were all there. The table was covered with patterns for Mary’s trousseau, and she herself was examining a heap of shawls, with Ada, at the window. Gussy, expectant, and changing colour so often that her agitation had already been remarked upon several times this morning, had kept close to her mother. Beatrice was practising a piece of music at the little piano in the corner, which was the girls’ favourite refuge for their musical studies. They all stopped in their various occupations, and turned round when he came in. Lady Augusta sprang to her feet, and put out one hand in awe and horror, to hold him at arm’s length. Her first look was for him, her second for Gussy, to whom she said, “Go—instantly!” as distinctly as eyes could speak; but, for once in her life, Gussy would not understand her mother’s eyes. And, what was worst of all, the two young ones, Mary and Beatrice, when they caught sight of Edgar, uttered each a cry of delight, and rushed upon him with eager hands outstretched.

“Oh! you have come home for It!—say you have come home for It!” cried Mary, to whom her approaching wedding was the one event which shadowed earth and heaven.

“Girls!” cried Lady Augusta, severely, “do not lay hold upon Mr. Earnshaw in that rude way. Go upstairs, all of you. Mr. Earnshaw’s business, no doubt, is with me.”

“Oh! mamma, mayn’t I talk to him for a moment?” cried Mary, aggrieved, and unwilling, in the fulness of her privileges, to acknowledge herself still under subjection.

But Lady Augusta’s eyes spoke very decisively this time, and Ada set the example by hastening away. Even Ada, however, could not resist the impulse of putting her hand in Edgar’s as she passed him. She divined everything in a moment. She said “God bless you!” softly, so that no one could hear it but himself. Only Gussy did not move.

“I must stay, mamma,” she said, in tones so vehement that even Lady Augusta was awed by them. “I will never disobey you again, but I must stay!”

And then Edgar was left alone, facing the offended lady. Gussy had stolen behind her, whence she could throw a glance of sympathy to her betrothed, undisturbed by her mother. Lady Augusta did not ask him to sit down. She seated herself in a stately manner, like a queen receiving a rebel.

“Mr. Earnshaw,” she said, solemnly, “after all that has passed between us, and all you have promised—I must believe that there is some very grave reason for your unexpected visit to-day.”

What a different reception it was from that she had given him, when—coming, as she supposed, on the same errand which really brought him now—he had to tell her of his loss of everything! Then the whole house had been pleasantly excited over the impending proposal; and Gussy had been kissed and petted by all her sisters, as the heroine of the drama; and Lady Augusta’s motherly heart had swelled with gratitude to God that she had secured for her daughter not only a good match, but a good man. It was difficult for Edgar, at least, to shut out all recollection of the one scene in the other. He answered with less humility than he had shown before, and with a dignity which impressed her, in spite of herself,

“Yes, there is a very grave reason for it,” he said—“the gravest reason—without which I should not have intruded upon you. I made you a voluntary promise some time since, seeing your dismay at my re-appearance, that I would not interfere with any of your plans, or put myself in your way.”

“Yes,” said Lady Augusta, in all the horror of suspense. Gussy, behind, whispered, “You have not!—you have not!” till her mother turned and looked at her, when she sank upon the nearest seat, and covered her face with her hands.

“I might say that I have not, according to the mere letter of my word,” said Edgar; “but I will not stand by that. Lady Augusta, I have come to tell you that I have broken my promise. I find I had no right to make it. I answered for myself, but not for another dearer than myself. The pledge was given in ignorance, and foolishly. I have broken it, and I have come to ask you to forgive me.”

“You have broken your word? Mr. Earnshaw, I was not aware that gentlemen ever did so. I do not believe you are capable of doing so,” she cried, in great agitation. “Gussy, go upstairs, you have nothing to do with this discussion—you were not a party to the bargain. I cannot—cannot allow myself to be treated in this way! Mr. Earnshaw, think what you are saying! You cannot go back from your word!”

“Forgive me,” he said, “I have done it. Had I known all, I would not have given the promise; I told Lady Mary Tottenham so; my pledge was for myself, to restrain my own feelings. From the moment that it was betrayed to me that she too had feelings to restrain, my very principle of action, my rule of honour, was changed. It was no longer my duty to deny myself to obey you. My first duty was to her, Lady Augusta—if in that I disappoint you, if I grieve you——”

“You do more than disappoint me—you horrify me!” cried Lady Augusta. “You make me think that nothing is to be relied upon—no man’s word to be trusted, No, no, we must have no more of this,” she said, with vehemence. “Forget what you have said, Mr. Earnshaw, and I will try to forget it. Go to your room, Gussy—this is no scene for you.”

Edgar stood before his judge motionless, saying no more. I think he felt now how completely the tables were turned, and what an almost cruel advantage he had over her. His part was that of fact and reality, which no one could conjure back into nothingness; and hers that of opposition, disapproval, resistance to the inevitable. He was the rock, and she the vexed and vexing waves, dashing against it, unable to overthrow it. In their last great encounter these positions had been reversed, and it was she who had command of the situation. Now, howsoever parental authority might resist, or the world oppose, the two lovers knew very well, being persons in their full senses, and of full age, that they had but to persevere, and their point would be gained.

Lady Augusta felt it too—it was this which had made her so deeply alarmed from the first, so anxious to keep Edgar at arm’s length. The moment she caught sight of him on this particular morning, she felt that all was over. But that certainty unfortunately does not quench the feelings of opposition, though it may take all hope of eventual success from them. All that this secret conviction of the uselessness of resistance did for Lady Augusta was to make her more hot, more desperate, more acharnée than she had ever been. She grew angry at the silence of her opponent—his very patience seemed a renewed wrong, a contemptuous evidence of conscious power.

“You do not say anything,” she cried. “You allow me to speak without an answer. What do you mean me to understand by this—that you defy me? I have treated you as a friend all along. I thought you were good, and honourable, and true. I have always stood up for you—treated you almost like a son! And is this to be the end of it? You defy me! You teach my own child to resist my will! You do not even keep up the farce of respecting my opinion—now that she has gone over to your side!”

Here poor Lady Augusta got up from her chair, flushed and trembling, with the tears coming to her eyes, and an angry despair warring against very different feelings in her mind. She rose up, not looking at either of the culprits, and leant her arm on the mantelpiece, and gazed unawares at her own excited, troubled countenance in the glass. Yes, they had left her out of their calculations; she who had always (she knew) been so good to them! It no longer seemed worth while to send Gussy away, to treat her as if she were innocent of the complot. She had gone over to the other side. Lady Augusta felt herself deserted, slighted, injured, with the two against her—and determined, doubly determined, never to yield.

“Mamma,” said Gussy, softly, “do not be angry with Edgar. Don’t you know, as well as I, that I have always been on his side?”

“Don’t venture to say a word to me, Gussy,” said Lady Augusta. “I will not endure it from you!”

“Mamma, I must speak. It was you who turned my thoughts to him first. Was it likely that I should forget him because he was in trouble? Why, you did not! You yourself were fond of him all along, and trusted him so that you took his pledge to give up his own will to yours. But I never gave any pledge,” said Gussy, folding her hands. “You never asked me what I thought, or I should have told you. I have been waiting for Edgar. He has not dared to come to me since he came back to England, because of his promise to you; and I have not dared to go to him, because—simply because I was a woman. But when we met, mamma—when we met, I say—not his seeking or my seeking—by accident, as you call it——”

“Oh! accident!” cried Lady Augusta, with a sneer, which sat very strangely upon her kind face. “Accident! One knows how such accidents come to pass!”

“If you doubt our truth,” cried Gussy, in a little outburst, “of course there is no more to say.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the mother, faintly. She had put herself in the wrong. The sneer, the first and only sneer of which poor Lady Augusta had known herself to be guilty, turned to a weapon against her. Compunction and shame filled up the last drop of the conflicting emotions that possessed her. “It is easy for you both to speak,” she said, “very easy; to you it is nothing but a matter of feeling. You never ask yourself how it is to be done. You never think of the thousand difficulties with the world, with your father, with circumstances. What have I taken the trouble to struggle for? You yourself do me justice, Gussy! Not because I would not have preferred Edgar—oh! don’t come near me!” she cried, holding out her hand to keep him back; as he approached a step at the softening sound of his name—“don’t work upon my feelings! It is cruel; it is taking a mean advantage. Not because I did not prefer him—but because life is not a dream, as you think it, not a romance, nor a poem. What am I to do?” cried Lady Augusta, clasping her hands, and raising them with unconscious, most natural theatricalness. “What am I to do? How am I to face your father, your brothers, the world?”

I do not know what the two listeners could have done, after the climax of this speech, but to put themselves at her feet, with that instinct of nature in extreme circumstances which the theatre has seized for its own, and given a partially absurd colour to; but they were saved from thus committing themselves by the sudden and precipitate entrance of Lady Mary, who flung the door open, and suddenly rushed among them without warning or preparation.

“I come to warn you,” she cried, “Augusta!” Then stopped short, seeing at a glance the state of affairs.

They all stood gazing at each other for a moment, the others not divining what this interruption might mean, and feeling instinctively driven back upon conventional self-restraint and propriety, by the entrance of the new-comer. Lady Augusta unclasped her hands, and stole back guiltily to her chair. Edgar recovered his wits, and placed one for Lady Mary. Gussy dropped upon the sofa behind her mother, and cast a secret glance of triumph at him from eyes still wet with tears. He alone remained standing, a culprit still on his trial, who felt the number of his judges increased, without knowing whether his cause would take a favourable or unfavourable aspect in the eyes of the new occupant of the judicial bench.

“What have you all been doing?” said Lady Mary—“you look as much confused and scared by my appearance as if I had disturbed you in the midst of some wrong-doing or other. Am I to divine what has happened? It is what I was coming to warn you against; I was going to say that I could no longer answer for Mr. Earnshaw—”

“I have spoken for myself,” said Edgar. “Lady Augusta knows that all my ideas and my duties have changed. I do not think I need stay longer. I should prefer to write to Mr. Thornleigh at once, unless Lady Augusta objects; but I can take no final negative now from anyone but Gussy herself.”

“And that he shall never have!” cried Gussy, with a ring of premature triumph in her voice. Her mother turned round upon her again with a glance of fire.

“Is that the tone you have learned among the Sisters?” said Lady Augusta, severely. “Yes, go, Mr. Earnshaw, go—we have had enough of this.”

Edgar was perhaps as much shaken as any of them by all he had gone through. He went up to Lady Augusta, and took her half-unwilling hand and kissed it.

“Do you remember,” he said, “dear Lady Augusta, when you cried over me in my ruin, and kissed me like my mother? I cannot forget it, if I should live a hundred years. You have never abandoned me, though you feared me. Say one kind word to me before I go.”

Lady Augusta tried hard not to look at the supplicant. She turned her head away, she gulped down a something in her throat which almost overcame her. The tears rushed to her eyes.

“Don’t speak to me!” she cried—“don’t speak to me! Shall I not be a sufferer too? God bless you, Edgar! I have always felt like your mother. Go away!—go away!—don’t speak to me any more!”

Edgar had the sense to obey her without another look or word. He did not even pause to glance at Gussy (at which she was much aggrieved), but left the room at once. And then Gussy crept to her mother’s side, and knelt down there, clinging with her arms about the vanquished Rhadamantha; and the three women kissed each other, and cried together, not quite sure whether it was for sorrow or joy.

“You are in love with him yourself, Augusta!” cried Lady Mary, laughing and crying together before this outburst was over.

“And so I am,” said Gussy’s mother, drying her kind eyes.

Edgar, as he rushed out, saw heads peeping over the staircase, of which he took no notice, though one of them was no less than the curled and shining head of the future Lady Granton, destined Marchioness (one day or other) of Hauteville. He escaped from these anxious spies, and rushed through the hall, feeling himself safest out of the house. But on the threshold he met Harry Thornleigh, who looked at him from head to foot with an insolent surprise which made Edgar’s blood boil.

“You here!” said Harry, with unmistakably disagreeable intention; then all at once his tone changed—Edgar could not imagine why—and he held out his hand in greeting. “Missed you at Tottenham’s,” said Harry; “they all want you. That little brute Phil is getting unendurable. I wish you’d whop him when you go back.”

“I shall not be back for some days,” said Edgar shortly. “I have business——”

“Here?” asked Harry, with well-simulated surprise. “If you’ll let me give you a little advice, Earnshaw, and won’t take it amiss—I can’t help saying you’ll get no good here.”

“Thank you,” said Edgar, feeling a glow of offence mount to his face. “I suppose every man is the best judge in his own case; but, in the meantime, I am leaving town—for a day or two.”

“Au revoir, then, at Tottenham’s,” said Harry, with a nod, half-hostile, half-friendly, and marched into his own house, or what would one day be his own house, with the air of a master. Edgar left it with a curious sense of the discouragement meant to be conveyed to him, which was half-whimsical, half-painful. Harry meant nothing less than to make him feel that his presence was undesired and inopportune, without, however, making any breach with him; he had his own reasons for keeping up a certain degree of friendship with Edgar, but he had no desire that it should go any further than he thought proper and suitable. As for his sister’s feelings in the matter, Harry ignored and scouted them with perfect calm and self-possession. If she went and entered a Sisterhood, as they had all feared at one time, why, she would make a fool of herself, and there would be an end of it! “I shouldn’t interfere,” Harry had said. “It would be silly; but there would be an end of her—no more responsibility, and that sort of thing. Let her, if she likes, so long as you’re sure she’ll stay.” But to allow her to make “a low marriage” was an entirely different matter. Therefore he set Edgar down, according to his own consciousness, even though he was quite disinclined to quarrel with Edgar. He was troubled by no meltings of heart, such as disturbed the repose of his mother. He liked the man well enough, but what had that to do with it? It was necessary that Gussy should marry well if she married at all—not so much for herself as for the future interests of the house of Thornleigh. Harry felt that to have a set of little beggars calling him “uncle,” in the future ages, and sheltering themselves under the shadow of Thornleigh, was a thing totally out of the question. The heir indeed might choose for himself, having it in his power to bestow honour, as in the case of King Cophetua. But probably even King Cophetua would have deeply disapproved, and indeed interdicted beggar-maids for his brother, how much more beggar-men for his sisters—or any connection which could detract from the importance of the future head of the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

A Suggestion.

But though his heart was full of his own affairs, he thought it best, on the whole, to defer the confidence with which he meant to honour Lady Augusta, to a more convenient season. Harry was not particularly bright, and he felt his own concerns to be so infinitely more important than anything concerning “the girls,” that the two things could not be put in comparison; but yet the immediate precedent of the sending away of Gussy’s lover was perhaps not quite the best that could be wished for the favourable hearing of Harry’s love. Besides, Lady Augusta was not so amiable that day as she often was. She was surrounded by a flutter of girls, putting questions, teasing her for replies, which she seemed very little disposed to give; and Harry had somewhat fallen in his mother’s opinion, since it had been proved that to have him “on the spot” had really been quite inefficacious for her purpose. Her confidence in him had been so unjustifiably great, though Harry was totally ignorant of it, that her unexpected disapproval was in proportion now.

“It was not Harry’s fault,” Ada had ventured to say. “How could he guide events that happened in London when he was at Tottenham’s?”

“He ought to have paid more attention,” was all that Lady Augusta said. And unconsciously she turned a cold shoulder to Harry, rather glad, on the whole, that there was somebody, rightly or wrongly, to blame.

So Harry returned to Tottenham’s with his aunt, hurriedly proffering a visit a few days after. Nobody perceived the suppressed excitement with which he made this offer, for the house was too full of the stir of one storm, scarcely blown over, to think of another. He went back, accordingly, into the country stillness, and spent another lingering twilight hour with Margaret. How different the atmosphere seemed to be in which she was! It was another world to Harry; he seemed to himself a better man. How kind he felt towards the little girl!—he who would have liked to kick Phil, and thought the Tottenham children so ridiculously out of place, brought to the front, as they always were. When little Sibby was “brought to the front,” her mother seemed but to gain a grace the more, and in the cottage Harry was a better man. He took down with him the loveliest bouquet of flowers that could be got in Covent Garden, and a few plants in pots, the choicest of their kind, and quite unlikely, had he known it, to suit the atmosphere of the poky little cottage parlour.

Mr. Franks had begun to move out of the doctor’s house, and very soon the new family would be able to make their entrance. Margaret and her brother were going to town to get some furniture, and Harry volunteered to give them the benefit of his experience, and join their party.

“But we want cheap things,” Margaret said, true to her principle of making no false pretences that could be dispensed with. This did not in the least affect Harry; he would have stood by and listened to her cheapening a pot or kettle with a conviction that it was the very best thing to do. There are other kinds of love, and some which do not so heartily accept as perfect all that is done by their object; and there are different stages of love, in not all of which, perhaps, is this beautiful satisfaction apparent; but at present Harry could see nothing wrong in the object of his adoration. Whatever she did was right, graceful, beautiful—the wisest and the best. I do not suppose it is in the nature of things that this lovely and delightful state of sentiment could last—but for the moment so it was. And thus, while poor Lady Augusta passed her days peacefully enough—half happy, half wretched, now allowing herself to listen to Gussy’s anticipations, now asking bitterly how on earth they expected to exist—this was preparing for her which was to turn even the glory of Mary’s approaching wedding into misery, and overwhelm the whole house of Thornleigh with dismay. So blind is human nature, that Lady Augusta had not the slightest apprehension about Harry. He, at least, was out of harm’s way—so long as the poor boy could find anything to amuse him in the country—she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction and relief.

At the other Tottenham’s, things were settling down after the Entertainment, and happily the result had been so gratifying and successful that all the feuds and searching of hearts had calmed down. The supper had been “beautiful,” the guests gracious, the enjoyment almost perfect. Thereafter, to his dying day, Mr. Robinson was able to quote what Her Grace the Duchess of Middlemarch had said to him on the subject of his daughter’s performance, and the Duchess’s joke became a kind of capital for the establishment, always ready to be drawn upon. No other establishment had before offered a subject of witty remark (though Her Grace, good soul, was totally unaware of having been witty) to a Duchess—no other young ladies and gentlemen attached to a house of business had ever hobbed and nobbed with the great people in society. The individuals who had sent in resignations were too glad to be allowed to forget them, and Mr. Tottenham was in the highest feather, and felt his scheme to have prospered beyond his highest hopes.

“There is nothing so humanizing as social intercourse,” he said. “I don’t say my people are any great things, and we all know that society, as represented by Her Grace of Middlemarch, is not overwhelmingly witty or agreeable—eh, Earnshaw? But somehow, in the clash of the two extremes, something is struck out—a spark that you could not have otherwise—a really improving influence. I have always thought so; and, thank heaven, I have lived to carry out my theory.”

“At the cost of very hard work, and much annoyance,” said Edgar.

“Oh! nothing—nothing, Earnshaw—mere bagatelles. I was tired, and had lost my temper—very wrong, but I suppose it will happen sometimes; and not being perfect myself, how am I to expect my people to be perfect?” said the philanthropist. “Never mind these little matters. The pother has blown over, and the good remains. By the way, Miss Lockwood is asking for you, Earnshaw—have you cleared up that business of hers? She’s in a bad way, poor creature! She would expose herself with bare arms and shoulders, till I sent her an opera-cloak, at a great sacrifice, from Robinson’s department, to cover her up; and she’s caught more cold. Go and see her, there’s a good fellow; she’s always asking for you.”

Miss Lockwood was in the ladies’ sitting-room, where Edgar had seen her before, wrapped in the warm red opera-cloak which Mr. Tottenham had sent her, and seated by the fire. Her cheeks were more hollow than ever, her eyes full of feverish brightness.

“Look here,” she said, when Edgar entered, “I don’t want you any longer. You’ve got it in your head I’m in a consumption, and you are keeping my papers back, thinking I’m going to die. I ain’t going to die—no such intention—and I’ll trouble you either to go on directly and get me my rights, or give me back all my papers, and I’ll look after them myself.”

“You are very welcome to your papers,” said Edgar. “I have written to Mr. Arden, to ask him to see me, but that is not on your account. I will give you, if you please, everything back.”

This did not content the impatient sufferer.

“Oh! I don’t want them back,” she said, pettishly—“I want you to push on—to push on! I’m tired of this life—I should like to try what a change would do. If he does not choose to take me home, he might take me to Italy, or somewhere out of these east winds. I’ve got copies all ready directed to send to his lawyers, in case you should play me false, or delay. I’m not going to die, don’t you think it; but now I’ve made up my mind to it, I’ll have my rights!”

“I hope you will take care of yourself in the meantime,” said Edgar, compassionately, looking at her with a somewhat melancholy face.

“Oh! get along with your doleful looks,” said Miss Lockwood, “trying to frighten me, like all the rest. I want a change—that’s what I want—change of air and scene. I want to go to Italy or somewhere. Push on—push on, and get it settled. I don’t want your sympathy—that’s what I want of you.”

Edgar heard her cough echo after him as he went along the long narrow passage, where he had met Gussy, back to Mr. Tottenham’s room. His patron called him from within as he was passing by.

“Earnshaw!” he cried, dropping his voice low, “I have not asked you yet—how did you get on, poor fellow, up at the Square?”

“I don’t quite know,” said Edgar—“better than I hoped; but I must see Mr. Thornleigh, or write to him. Which will be the best?”

“Look here,” said Mr. Tottenham, “I’ll do that for you. I know Thornleigh; he’s not a bad fellow at bottom, except when he’s worried. He sees when a thing’s no use. I daresay he’d make a stand, if there was any hope; but as you’re determined, and Gussy’s determined——”

“We are,” said Edgar. “Don’t think I don’t grudge her as much as anyone can to poverty and namelessness; but since it is her choice——”

“So did Mary,” said Mr. Tottenham, following out his own thoughts, with a comprehensible disregard of grammar. “They stood out as long as they could, but they had to give in at last; and so must everybody give in at last, if only you hold to it. That’s the secret—stick to it!—nothing can stand against that.” He wrung Edgar’s hand, and patted him on the back, by way of encouragement. “But don’t tell anyone I said so,” he added, nodding, with a humorous gleam out of his grey eyes.

Edgar found more letters awaiting him at his club—letters of the same kind as yesterday’s, which he read with again a totally changed sentiment. Clare had gone into the background, Gussy had come uppermost. He read them eagerly, with his mind on the stretch to see what might be made of them. Everybody was kind. “Tell us what you can do—how we can help you,” they said. After all, it occurred to him now, in the practical turn his mind had taken, “What could he do?” The answer was ready—“Anything.” But then this was a very vague answer, he suddenly felt; and to identify any one thing or other that he could do, was difficult. He was turning over the question deeply in his mind, when a letter, with Lord Newmarch’s big official seal, caught his eye. He opened it hurriedly, hoping to find perhaps a rapid solution of his difficulty there. It ran thus:—