"Quite so. The friendship has never been interrupted. We are going to his house tonight," she added, perhaps incautiously. "To Grosvenor Square?" cried Adela. "Yes. I think it is the first entertainment he has given since you left it. Half London will be there." "If I could only go!" exclaimed Adela, a light rising in her eye, a flush to her pale cheek. Grace looked at her in surprise; she had forfeited the right ever to enter there. Grace made no comment, and a pause ensued. "Did you read the speech he made last Thursday night to the Commons?" resumed Adela, in a low tone. "Yes. Every one was talking of it. Did _you_ read it, Adela?--in Scotland?" Grace received no answer. Sir Sandy below could have told her that Adela used to seize upon the _Times_, when it arrived, with feverish interest, to see whether any speech of her husband's was reported in it. If so, Sir Sandy's belief was that she learnt it by heart, so long did she keep the paper. The chocolate finished, she lay back in the chair, her eyes looking into vacancy, her listless hands folded before her. Grace, sitting opposite, ostensibly occupied with some work, for she was rarely idle, had leisure to note her sister's countenance. It was much changed. Worn, wan, and weary it looked, but there was no special appearance now of ill health. "You are much better, are you not, Adela?" "Oh, I am very well," was the languid answer. "Do you like Scotland?" "I don't know." Grace thought she was tired after the night journey, and resolved to leave her to silence; but an interruption occurred. Frances came in. And, that Frances Chenevix could be melancholy for more than a minute at any time, was not to be expected. In spite of Adela's evidently subdued state of mind, she, after a few staid sentences, ran off at a gay tangent. "What do you think, Grace?" she began. "We had very nearly lost our party tonight--one, Adela, that your whilom husband gives. He and his sister have been telegraphed for this afternoon to Netherleigh. Poor Mrs. Dalrymple has met with some serious accident; there has been an operation, and the result is, I suppose, uncertain. They have both started by train, and therefore cannot be at home to receive the people tonight." "Is the party put off, then?" questioned Grace. "No, there was not time to do it: how could he send round to all the world and his wife? It is to take place without him, mamma playing host in his absence." "I wonder what Mrs. Dalrymple could want with him?" "Just what I wondered, Grace. Mamma thinks it must be to speak to him about her affairs. He is her executor, I believe: not, poor woman, that she has much to leave." Adela had listened to this in silence: an eager look was dawning on her face. "Do you mean to say, Frances, that he--that my husband--will not be there at all?--in his own house?"