Mr. Burchell was brought upstairs with some solemnity. Though Mrs. Meredith’s mind was very full of all that had been passing, and with no small amount of personal feeling, a father in such a case could not be put off. They were all agitated in different ways, the elder people painfully, the young ones happily. As for Edward, his energy and satisfaction knew no bounds. He even jarred upon the feelings of the others, though most innocently, his heart was so light. ‘You are like Oswald,’ his mother said to him, with a sigh of anxiety; ‘you are not like yourself.’ ‘I feel like Oswald,’ said Edward. He did not seem able to put his self-gratulation into fitter words. The sense of being second, of being the shadow to Oswald’s sunshine, went out of his mind; and, with it, all sense of grudging and everything like envy, which, however deeply repressed and disapproved, had been in his heart hitherto, an involuntary weakness. All that was over now. That Cara loved him he scarcely ventured to believe; but she was free; she was not swept up like every other good thing by his elder brother. What an ease diffused itself through his heart! And with Cara, too, the sensation was that of ease; her bonds were broken. She might have stood faithful still as the Screen (for indeed that poor lady was in the _Vita Nuova_, and it was not kind of great Dante, great as he was!) but circumstances had broken her bonds. Cara had not been intimate with Agnes Burchell that she should be much disturbed by finding out her identity with Oswald’s Agnes. And after the first shock she was confident that nothing amiss could have happened to her while Oswald was there. And her own pre-occupations made the whole matter but secondary in her mind. Was it selfish of her? But she could not help it. She had cast off more than one burden; her young frame was tingling with the excitement of the two disclosures she had made, one of which had brought her father to her, the other--well, the other at least had set her free; it had set her right with others, if nothing more. It was Edward who went to the dining-room to conduct Mr. Burchell upstairs, feeling such a friendliness towards him as words could not express. Had not he been the occasion of it all? ‘My mother begs that you will come upstairs,’ he said, feeling an inclination to hug his visitor, though he was little captivating. Mr. Burchell had a feeling of disapproval of the house and all that were in it. It was the house Roger had given an account of, where he had dined on Sunday, and where the lady lived who was so intimate with Mr. Beresford. The Rector disapproved of all such intimacy. But he was anxious and rather unhappy about his daughter, and it was his duty to take Agnes back out of this doubtful, perhaps polluted house. So he followed his conductor upstairs, looking about him with involuntary criticism. These kind of people had so many comforts that did not fall to the lot of their superiors in every moral sense.