Jim writhes. It seems to him as if he were being blind-folded, and having his arms tied to his sides by a hundred strong yet invisible threads. "Does no one know anything?" he cries miserably. "I have told you exactly what the doctor said," says Cecilia, with the venial crossness bred of real anxiety. "I suppose you do not wish me to invent something that he did not say?" "Of course not; but I wish I had been here--I wish I had been here!"--restlessly. "Why were not you?" No immediate answer. "Why were not you?" repeats she, curiosity, for the moment, superseding her disquiet. "What prevented you? I thought, when you left us, that you meant to come back at once?" "So I did, but----" "But what?" "I could not; I was with Byng." "With Byng?" repeats Cecilia, too genuinely astonished to remember even to prefix a "Mr." to Byng's name. "Why, I should have thought that if there were one day of his life on which he could have done without you better than another, it would have been to-day!" "Were not you rather _de trop_?" chimes in Sybilla's languid voice from the sofa. "Rather a bad third?" "I was not a third at all." "Do you mean to say," cries Cecilia, her countenance tinged with the pink of a generous indignation, "that you were _four_--that Mrs. Le Marchant stayed in the room the whole time? I must say that now that they are really and _bonâ fide_ engaged, I think she might leave them alone together." "Mrs. Le Marchant was not there at all." Then, seeing the open-mouthed astonishment depicted on the faces of his audience, he braces his mind to make the inevitable yet dreaded announcement. "I had better explain at once that neither Mrs. nor Miss Le Marchant was there; they are gone." "Gone!" "Yes; they left Florence at seven o'clock this morning." There is a moment of silent stupefaction. "I suppose," says Cecilia, at last slowly recovering the power of speech, "that they were telegraphed for? Mr. Le Marchant is dead or ill? one of the married sisters? one of the brothers?" Never in his life has Jim laboured under so severe a temptation to tell a lie, were it only the modified falsehood of allowing Cecilia's hypothesis to pass uncontradicted; but even if he were able for once to conquer his constitutional incapacity, he knows that in this case it would be useless. The truth must transpire to-morrow. "I believe not." "Gone!" repeats Cecilia, in a still more thunderstruck key than before--"and where are they gone?" "I do not know." "Why did they go?" Jim makes an impatient movement, fidgeting on his chair. "I can only tell you their actions; they told me their motives as little as they did you." "Gone! Why, they never said a word about it yesterday." This being of the nature of an assertion--not an interrogation--Jim feels with relief that it does not demand an answer. "Gone, at seven o'clock in the morning! Why, they could not have had time to pack their things!" "They left them behind."