‘Yes; I have ceased to be about the house as I used to be,’ the doctor said, with a slight confusion, grasping the hand offered to him. And then they sat down on two chairs opposite to each other, and there was a pause. They were both embarrassed a little. This kind of coolness between two friends is more difficult to get over than an actual quarrel. Maxwell was not at his ease. How many recollections this room brought back to him! That strange visitor who had stood by James Beresford’s side a minute before stood by his now. He seemed to see her standing against the light, shaking her finger at them in reproof. How often she had done so, the light catching her dress, making a kind of halo round her! Was it possible she was gone--gone, disappeared from before their eyes, making no sign? And yet how clearly she seemed to stand there, looking at the two whose talk she had so often interrupted, broken off, made an end of, with capricious sweet impertinences. Maxwell, like her husband, felt the reality of her so strong that his mind rejected with a strange vertigo the idea of her absolute severance from this house and this life. The vertigo grew still greater, and his head seemed to turn round and round when he remembered why he had come. ‘Why is it?’ said Beresford. ‘Something seems to have come between us--I can’t tell what. Is it accidental, or does it mean anything? I have had a distracted life, as you know, and I may have done something amiss---- ’ ‘No, no,’ said the other, hurriedly; ‘let us say nothing about that. I meant nothing. Beresford, if you have this feeling now, what will you think when you hear that I have undertaken a disagreeable, intrusive mission?’ ‘Intrusive?’ He smiled. ‘I don’t see what you could be intrusive about. You used to know all my affairs--and if you don’t know them now, it is not my fault.’ ‘Good heavens!’ cried the doctor, involuntarily, ‘how am I to do it? Look here, Beresford; I said I would come, thinking that I, who knew you so well, would annoy you less than a stranger--but I don’t feel so sure about that now.’ ‘What is this gunpowder plot?’ said Beresford, with a laugh. ‘Have I been guilty of high treason without knowing it, and must I fly for my life?’ The doctor cleared his throat; he grew red in the face; finally he jumped up from his chair and went to the big fireplace, where he stood with his back to the fire, and his face a little out of his friend’s sight. ‘Beresford, have you ever thought what a strange position Mrs. Meredith is in?’ ‘Mrs. Meredith!’ He said this with such unfeigned surprise that his visitor felt more awkward than ever. ‘What can she have to do with any disunion between you and me?’ ‘By Jove!’ cried the doctor, ‘we are all a pack of fools;’ and from the fire he walked to the window in the perturbation of his thoughts. Beresford laughed. ‘One can never say anything civil to a speech like that--especially as, forgive me! I have not a notion what you are being fools about.’