“It is good of you to tell me this,” said Cecil. “It seems to put a meaning into this mystery which is always puzzling me and seeming so useless and unjust. By the by, Roy tells me that Darnell has left.” “Yes,” said Frithiof, “he left at Michaelmas. Things have been rather smoother since then.” “I can’t help thinking that his leaving just now is in direct evidence against him,” said Cecil. “Sigrid and I suspected him from the first. Do you not suspect him?” “Yes,” he replied, “I do. But without any reason.” “Why did he go?” “His wife was ill, and was ordered to a warmer climate. He has taken a situation at Plymouth. After all, there is no real evidence against him, and a great deal of evidence against me. How is it that you suspect him?” “It is because I know you had nothing to do with it,” said Cecil. He had guessed what her answer would be, yet loved to hear her say the words. It seemed to him that the dense fog, and the long drive at foot pace, and the anxiety to see the right way, and the manifold difficulties and dangers of this night, resembled his own life. And then it struck him how tedious the drive would have been to him but for Cecil’s presence, and he saw how great a difference her trust and friendship made to him. He had always liked her, but now gratitude and reverence woke a new feeling in his heart. Blanche’s faithlessness had so crippled his life that no thought of love in the ordinary sense of the word—of love culminating in marriage—came to his mind. But yet his heart went out to Cecil, and a new influence crept into his life—an influence that softened his hardness, that quieted his feverish impatience, that strengthened him to endure. “Sigrid and Swanhild have been away with Mme. Lechertier, have they not?” asked Cecil, after a silence. “Yes, they went to Hastings for a fortnight. We shut up the rooms, and I went down to Herr Sivertsen, who was staying near Warlingham, a charming little place in the Surrey hills.” “Sigrid told me you were with him, but I fancied she meant in London.” “No; once a year he tears himself from his dingy den in Museum Street, and goes down to this place. We were out of doors most of the day, and in the evening worked for four or five hours at a translation of Darwin which he is very anxious to get finished. Hullo! what is wrong?” He might well ask, for the horse was kicking and plunging violently. Shouts and oaths echoed through the murky darkness. Then they could just make out the outline of another horse at right angles with their own. He was almost upon them, struggling frantically, and the shaft of the cab belonging to him would have struck Cecil violently in the face had not Frithiof seized it and wrenched it away with all his force. Then, suddenly, the horse was dragged backward, their hansom shivered, reeled, and finally fell on its side.