When the Thorsgarth carriage had driven away, and the Balder Hall one came up, Otho handed Magdalen in, followed her, shut the window, and turned to her. After the bright light around the concert-room door, they seemed suddenly to plunge into utter and outer darkness, and Magdalen was glad of it, for she would not have had Otho see her face now for a great deal of money,—perhaps not even if his seeing it would have secured to her the object for which she had toiled so long and so unsuccessfully—the position of his wife. She did not know what he was going to say to her, but she believed she could guess. She believed that the new line she had lately taken towards him—to-night, and on one or two other occasions recently—had so angered his imperious and exacting temper that he was now going to tell her that their friendship was at an end, unless she would submit to take a lower position with regard to him than she had yet done. She knew—she had been so unhappy as to have to consider the subject, in reckoning with herself about Otho and his ‘intentions’—she knew that she had no ‘dishonourable’ proposal to fear from him. She had maintained always a footing distinctly forbidding such possibilities; but she dreaded and feared that he had shaken off what influence she had had over him—that he found he could exist without the counsel and advice for which he had often come to her, and which he professed, had often been of service to him. She believed he was angry that she had dared to thwart him in a whim which he considered to be harmless, and a kind of amusing joke, and that after making the bizarre and humiliating exhibition of himself, her, and Ada, which he had accomplished this evening, he was now going to let her understand that he was about to shake off her influence once and for all. And what was it that she experienced in this idea? Scarcely what might have been expected. Neither anger, contempt, nor indignation, but grief, sorrow, soreness; a yearning unwillingness to part, and a dread of the days when she should not see him; an almost passionate speculation as to whether she could not concede something—keep the man at her side, somehow. Thus she was glad when the darkness hid her face. He could not see the thrill that shot through her, as she wondered what the next half hour was to bring forth for her, and she managed to control her voice, and to say calmly— ‘Pray be quick. I do not know why I have granted you this favour at all. It is far beyond your deserts.’ ‘As for that, there may be two opinions. If you’d heard me out to-night, instead of pouncing upon me as you did——’ ‘Do not allude to that. It is over, and I have not repented my refusal to you. It was quite obvious what people thought when you appeared with that girl on your arm. Not for worlds would I have put myself into such a position.’