Mr. and Mrs. Routh had arrived at Homburg immediately after Mr. Felton and George had reached that place of fashionable resort. Their lodgings were in a more central situation than those of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers, and were within easy reach of all the means of diversion which the wicked little resort of the designing and their dupes commanded. George Dallas did not see much of Routh. He had been disturbed and impressed by Mr. Felton's exceedingly emphatic expression of opinion respecting that gentleman; he had been filled with a vague regret, for which now and then he took himself to task, as ungrateful and whimsical, for having renewed his intimacy with Routh. His levity, his callousness, respecting the dreadful event concerning which he had consulted him, had shocked George at the time, and his sense of them had grown with every hour's consideration of the matter (and they were many) in which he had since engaged. Nothing had occurred to him to reverse or weaken the force of Routh's opinion; but he could not get over his heartlessness. They met, indeed, frequently. They met when George and his uncle, or his stepfather, or both, walked about the town and its environs, or in the gardens; they met when George strolled about the salons of the Kursaal, religiously abstaining from play,--it was strange how the taste for it had passed away from him, and how little he suffered, even at first, in establishing the rule of self-restraint; but they rarely met in private, and they had not had half an hour's conversation in the week which had now elapsed since Routh and Harriet had arrived at Homburg. But George had seen Harriet daily. Every afternoon he escorted his mother during her drive, and then he called on Mrs. Routh. His visits tortured her, and yet they pleased her too. Above all, there was security in them. She should know everything he was doing; she should be quite sure no other influence, stronger, dangerous, was at work, while he came to her daily, and talked to her in the old frank way. Routh shrank from seeing him, as Harriet well knew, and felt, also, that there was security in his visits to her. "He will keep out of George's way, of course," she said to herself, when she acquiesced in the expediency of following Dallas to Homburg, and the necessity for keeping him strictly in sight, for some time at least. "He will not undertake the daily torture. No; that, too, must be my share. Well, I am tied to the stake, and there is no escape; only an interval of slumber now and then, more or less rare and brief. I don't want to tie him to it also--he could not bear it as I can."