All that day Harley L’Estrange had been more than usually mournful and dejected. Indeed the return to scenes associated with Nora’s presence increased the gloom that had settled on his mind since he had lost sight and trace of her. Audley, in the remorseful tenderness he felt for his injured friend, had induced L’Estrange towards evening to leave the Park, and go into a district some miles off, on pretence that he required Harley’s aid there to canvass certain important outvoters: the change of scene might rouse him from his reveries. Harley himself was glad to escape from the guests at Lansmere. He readily consented to go. He would not return that night. The outvoters lay remote and scattered—he might be absent for a day or two. When Harley was gone, Egerton himself sank into deep thought. There was rumour of some unexpected opposition. His partisans were alarmed and anxious. It was clear that the Lansmere interest, if attacked, was weaker than the Earl would believe; Egerton might lose his election. If so, what would become of him? How support his wife, whose return to him he always counted on, and whom it would then become him at all hazards to acknowledge? It was that day that he had spoken to William Hazeldean as to the family living. “Peace, at least,” thought the ambitious man—“I shall have peace!” And the Squire had promised him the rectory if needed; not without a secret pang, for his Carry was already using her conjugal influence in favour of her old school friend’s husband, Mr Dale; and the Squire thought Audley would be but a poor country parson, and Dale—if he would only grow a little plumper than his curacy could permit him to be—would be a parson in ten thousand. But while Audley thus prepared for the worst, he still brought his energies to bear on the more brilliant option; and sate with his committee, looking into canvass-books, and discussing the characters, politics, and local interests of every elector, until the night was wellnigh gone. When he gained his room, the shutters were unclosed, and he stood a few moments at the window gazing on the moon. At that sight, the thought of Nora, lost and afar, stole over him. The man, as we know, had in his nature little of romance and sentiment. Seldom was it his wont to gaze upon moon or stars. But whenever some whisper of romance did soften his hard, strong mind, or whenever moon or stars did charm his gaze from earth, Nora’s bright muse-like face—Nora’s sweet loving eyes, were seen in moon and star beam—Nora’s low tender voice, heard in the whisper of that which we call romance, and which is but the sound of the mysterious poetry that is ever in the air, could we but deign to hear it! He turned with a sigh, undressed, threw himself on his bed, and extinguished his light. But the light of the moon _would_ fill the room. It kept him awake for a little time; he turned his face from the calm, heavenly beam, resolutely towards the dull blind wall, and fell asleep.