Was it the same art which made Frances look up with that bright look of welcome, and almost affectionate interest, when they returned to the drawing-room? Sir Thomas liked her so much, that he hoped it was not merely one of their tricks; then paused, and said to himself that it would be better if it were so, and not that the girl had really taken a fancy to this young fellow, whose heart and head were both full of another, and who, even without that, would evidently be a very poor thing for Lady Markham’s daughter. Sir Thomas was so far unjust to Frances, that he concluded it must be one of her tricks, when he recollected how complacent she had been to Claude Ramsay, finding places for him where he could sit out of the draught. They were all like that, he said to himself; but concluded that, as one nail drives out another, a second “affair,” if he could be drawn into it, might cure the victim. This rapid _résumé_ of all the circumstances, present and future, is a thing which may well take place in an experienced mind in the moment of entering a room in which there are materials for the development of a new chapter in the social drama. The conclusion he came to led him to the side of Lady Markham, who was writing the address upon one of her many notes. “It is to Nelly Winterbourn,” she explained, “to inquire---- You know they have dragged that poor sufferer up to town, to be near the best advice; and he is lying more dead than alive.” “Perhaps it is not very benevolent, so far as he is concerned; but I hope he’ll linger a long time,” said Sir Thomas. “Oh, so do I! These imbroglios may go on for a long time and do nobody any harm. But when a horrible crisis comes, and one feels that they must be cleared up!” It was evident that in this Lady Markham was not specially considering the sufferings of poor Mr Winterbourn. “What does Markham say?” Sir Thomas asked. “Say! He does not say anything. He shuffles--you know the way he has. He never could stand still upon both of his feet.” “And you can’t guess what he means to do?” “I think---- But who can tell? even with one whom I know so intimately as Markham. I don’t say even in my son, for that does not tell for very much.” “Nothing at all,” said the social philosopher. “Oh, a little, sometimes. I believe to a certain extent in a kind of magnetic sympathy. You don’t, I know. I think, then, so far as I can make out, that Markham would rather do nothing at all. He likes the _status quo_ well enough. But then he is only one; and the other--one cannot tell how she might feel.” “Nelly is the unknown quantity,” said Sir Thomas; and then Lady Markham sent away, by the hands of the footman, her anxious affectionate little billet “to inquire.”